i'm starting with a book, but best to brace for a veer of sorts

I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.

I'm a bit stubborn when it comes to finishing things. Those who have had the *pleasure* of observing me with a sudoku puzzle might prefer the word obsessive. I say this because I very nearly had to force myself to finish reading the last few chapters of Life of Pi (the source of the above passage). It's not that I wasn't enjoying it so much as that I wanted to like it so much more than I was. But after nearly abandoning it twice, I finally decided to accept myself for the fervent task-completer I am and hunkered down to finish. And since the payoff came hard and fast at the end, boy am I sure glad that I did.

But my point here isn't really about the book as a whole. Instead, it has more to do with that above quoted passage. Recently, it seems as if there's a never ending pile of detritus I find myself having to sift through, and it's conspiring to make me feel nervous, tired, overwhelmed and a bit mopey. However, as I was fluctuating between all these emotions on my commute home, I remembered that tiny little chapter in Life of Pi.

See, I refuse to believe that this is the better story. But since I'm having a hard time finding that better story at the present, I suppose I'm just going to have to author it myself. And thus:

My principal hired me a full-time paper grader/copy maker/complimenter/masseuse.

I have just won the lottery.

The sun is shining, the trees have finally turned, and I will never again need the three umbrellas I seem to have lost.

My hoped-for trip to sunny Spain did not fall through.

Everyone I love feels safe, happy and healthy.

And I, whenever necessary, can become a tiger.

Oh, yes. That is the better one, and so that is what I choose to believe.