From the Marginalian, a humbling and inspiring metaphor for life found in the humble worm:

There are experiences in life that strike at the center of our being, sundering us in half with unforeseen pain for which we were entirely unbraced. Because we know that this is possible — from the lives of others, from our own past experience, from the history of the heart recorded in our literature — we are always living with the awareness, conscious or unconscious, that life can sunder us at any given point without warning. This is the price of consciousness, which makes living both difficult and urgent.

Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal