It changes one to go through this experience. It change me, and I am still changing. It's not over. Is it ever? What am I becoming? I don't know. Many never make it through at all. Never find the door, the key, the saving grace of compassion for themselves, for the world, for the desperation in the eyes of others. If they live at all, such broken souls -- and they are all around us -- are often said to have "the ten-thousand yard stare." Is what they're seeing a delusion? To answer that, you need to know what isn't. And you can't know that. It's a fruitless question. To live here is the bodhisattva way. To stay, seek no return. To understand there is no way back. No past, no future, nothing doing. Look in my eyes. You see? So here we are out on the ice. My warmth is your warmth. Huddle closer. Soon enough it will be night.