We live in a world that is not perfectible, a world that always presents you with a sense of something undone, something missing, something hurting, something irritating.

From that minor sense of discomfort to torture and poverty and murder, we live in that kind of universe. The wound that does not heal – this human predicament is a predicament that does not perfect itself. But there is the consolation of no exit, the consolation that this is what you’re stuck with.

Rather than the consolation of healing the wound, of finding the right kind of medical attention or the right kind of religion, there is a certain wisdom of no exit: this is our human predicament and the only consolation is embracing it. It is our situation, and the only consolation is the full embrace of that reality.

Leonard Cohen