My mom told me once that when you're afraid of something, what you want more than anything else is to make it go away. You want your life back to the way it was before you found out that there was something to be afraid of. You want to build a high wall and live your old life behind it. But nothing ever stays the same. That's not your old life at all. That's your new life with a wall around it.
Your choice is not about going back to the way things were. Your choice is about hiding, or about going right to the heart of the thing that scares you.
My grandfather used to tell my mom that kids should never have to worry about anything more serious than baseball. Everything you need to know is there. It has success and failure, moments when you come together and moments where you stand alone. And it has an ending. Not a clock, like in other sports, but an ending. And that, my grandfather said to my mom, is as close as a kid should have to come to that sort of thing.
Sometimes the best way to move into the unknown is to take familiar steps, small steps. To do ordinary things to deal with something that is in no way ordinary.
When you're little, you like to think you know everything, but the last thing you really want is to know too much. What you really want is for grown-ups to make the world a safe place where dreams can come true and promises are never broken. And when you're little, it doesn't seem like a lot to ask.
Is every moment of our lives built into us before we're born? If it is, does that make us less responsible for the things we do? Or is the responsibility built in too? After you hit the ball, do you stand and wait to see if it goes out, or do you start running and let nature take its course?
Why do people want so desperately not to be alone? Why is it more comforting to think you are being watched than to know that no one at all is watching?
People believe what they want to believe. They find meaning where they can, and they cling to it. In the end, it really doesn't matter what's a trick and what's true. What matters is that people believe.
People like to examine the things that frighten them, to look at them and give them names, so saints look for God, and scientists look for evidence. They're both just trying to take away the mystery, to take away the fear.
We're all standing on the edge of a cliff, all the time, every day, a cliff we're all going over. Our choice isn't about that. Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall.
People come home for a lot of reasons. They come home to remember. They come home because they’ve got nowhere else to go. They come home when they’re beaten. They come home when they’re proud. They come home looking for a door out into their past or a road out into their future.
Some people put a lot of work into their lawn, as if a patch of green grass was the most important thing in the world. As if they thought that as long as the lawn out front was green and mowed and beautiful, it wouldn't matter at all what was going on inside of the house.
Sometimes people come to a moment where they think they've found that one last chance to be someone else. And they go for it. When it doesn't work out, they spend the rest of their lives looking back over their shoulder at what might've been.
How do you let someone go? How do you understand that's alright, that everything changes? How do you find a way for that to make you feel good about life, instead of breaking your heart? The hardest thing you'll ever learn is how to say goodbye.