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As you go through life, you've got to see the valleys as well as the peaks.

You go through life in a series of peaks and valleys.

But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

All of life is peaks and valleys. Don't let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low.

Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise.

'Precious' is strangely uplifting. It goes down into the valley but it also goes to the mountain tops. A lot of difficult realities are explored in 'Precious,' but the peaks make the valleys and the valleys make the peaks.

Eventually, we reach the point where we start to realize that we are not going to find peace, contentment, happiness, strength, fearlessness - all of the things that in our heart of hearts we wish we had - outside of us.

The reward of suffering is experience.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.