It’s strange that I could have laughed so hard under those circumstances, during that very dark moment in my life. But I’ve decided sorrow can make things funnier. Endure enough hardship, and you start really needing a good laugh.
Getting what you want doesn’t make you happy... Having doesn’t make you happy: appreciating does; Happiness is more about appreciation than acquisition.
Yes, the world is full of unspeakable cruelty. But the answer wasn’t to never feel hope, or bliss, or love-but to savor every fleeting, precious second of those feelings when they came.
I’m always amazed at how fast siblings can warp-speed into a state of rage. It’s like they keep everything they were ever angry about growing up shoved into an overstuffed emotional closet, and at moments like these, it takes about two seconds to swing the door open and start an avalanche.
The crash all those years ago shattered the life I had, but the pieces wound up making a pretty good mosaic. That’s what art is, I suppose: transforming things from what they were into what they could be. My life now, without question, is transformed. Maybe that makes it a work of art.
I gave you Jake because you’re headstrong and accident prone, and he’s our medic and I trust him to patch you up. I gave you Jake because you’re the best map reader we’ve got, and he’s damn near blind. And I gave you Jake because you absolutely never believe in yourself – and he finds a way to believe in you every damn day.
I just wanted to be good at this. And competent. And tough. And, ultimately, just: anybody but me. I was tired of being a disaster. I was tired of being a trampled-on flower. I wanted to be awesome. That wasn’t too much, was it?
I had told my story. I had put it into words, at last... Telling the story changed the story for me. Not what had happened – that I could never change – but how I responded to it.
The greater our capacity for sorrow becomes, the greater our capacity for joy.
I made a choice to get inspired. I made lists of reasons to feel hopeful. I forced myself to look at the sky and see green.
The most important thing to remember is that getting what you want doesn’t make you happy. Happiness is more about appreciation than acquisition.
You can’t fix everything. Not even close. But you can look for reasons to be grateful. More than that, you can work to create them.
You have to find inspiration in the struggle, and pull joy out of the hardship.
Well, for example, happy people are more likely to register joy than unhappy people. So if you take two people who have experienced a day of, say, fifty percent good things and fifty percent bad things, an unhappy person would remember more of the bad.
I had a purpose. I had a reason to take a shower every morning. I had a reason to take care of myself. More than that, I was figuring out how doing something for other people could – in fact – be doing something for yourself. Amazing.
We don’t fix everything, but we sure do make things better.
If you think of human emotions as music, then mine were like an orchestra with no conductor.
You can’t just wish strength for yourself. Or wisdom. Or resilience. Those things have to be earned.
Because you absolutely never believe in yourself – and he finds a way to believe in you every damn day.
You get one life, and it only goes forward. And there really are all kinds of happy endings.