The Life Before Her Eyes

Mr. McClood:
And if there's anything I want you guys to take with you from this class, as you're abusing your bodies over break, is three things: the heart is the body's strongest muscle, that the brain has more cells in it than our galaxy has stars, and that the body is 72% water. So wherever you go over vacation, don't get too dehydrated.

Maureen:
How did you do on that test?

Young Diana:
I did ok, I got the one about the heart...

Young Diana:
I don't really think that's true though, Maureen - -about it being the strongest muscle...

Young Diana:
[crying] I don't think in my case it is at all.

Young Diana:
[first lines - smoking in the locker room] That old b*tch! I'm serious, if I have to jump over another pummel horse, or whatever they're called.

Maureen:
You guys should probably put that out.

Young Diana:
Why?

Maureen:
Shrankins is like 5 feet behind me.

Diana McFee:
[bedtime story she reads to Emma] When the voices of children are heard on the green. And laughing is heard on the hill. My heart is at rest within my breast. And everything else is still. Then come home my children, the sun is gone down. And the dews of night arise. Come, come, let us play, and let us away. Till the morning appears in the skies. No, no, let us play, for it is yet day. And we cannot go to sleep. Besides, in the sky the little birds fly. And the hills are all covered with sheep. Well, well, go and play till the light fades away. And then go home to bed. The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed. And all the hills echoed.

Mr. McClood:
The heart is the body's strongest muscle.

Young Diana:
Maureen, what did I do to deserve a friend like you?

Maureen:
Um, something in a past life?

Paul McFee:
William James, that most American philosopher, once advised: "begin to be now what you will be hereafter". One might ask how? Our deepest guide in our beginning to be, is our imagination. Our ability to project, and mold our future selves from the myriad possibilities before us. And to imagine takes courage and effort. But it gives us hope too, hope that we can author our own destinies, hope that rightness of the decisions we make now will be borne out in the future. As much as we can be overwhelmed by the world, we can also draw hope from it. From beauty, from promise, from the simple fact that we have the talent to imagine our future selves from all the possible lives that pass before our eyes. We must imagine our lives well. We must engage our conscience. Conscience is the voice of God in the nature and heart of man.