May 7, 2014

2014.05.07
She left, and I wandered the streets for hours, crying tears of release. All the while I thought on the truth of Bashaarat's words: past and future are the same, and we cannot change them either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive our lessons.
Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.