Like and As

You put up a brave front in this world, especially if it’s the world I was born into. No matter what sad thing happens, you go on with business as usual if for no other reason than that it would never do to let down in front of the help. You go on teaching your ninth graders the difference between like and as. You keep the lawn mowed in the summer and the walk shoveled in the winter. When you find out your wife has been cheating on you with your muscle-bound nephew, you don’t throw them out but get out yourself. You move into Mrs. Gunther’s boarding house where after a while things work themselves out somehow and you get back together again so almost entirely as if nothing had ever happened that it might as well not have, for all you take away from it that might have saved your soul.

-Frederick Buechner, Treasure Hunt