The Good Part

by Sophie Cousens

Then I will try to do it all again tomorrow, only better.

“But maybe there aren’t any shortcuts in life. Maybe you have to live it all, because it makes you who you are.”

“I want to go back. Please, I want to go back. I want to live every messy day—the good ones and the ones that suck—where I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t know where I’m going or how to get there. I want to go on all the shit dates, because then, when I meet the right person I will know how special he is. And when I find him, I don’t want to miss a minute. I don’t want to miss making him laugh for the first time, I don’t want to miss discovering that his eyes look green rather than blue when he wakes up in the morning. I don’t want to miss our first kiss, our first fight, our first anything. And I’ll take the heartache and the horror and the losses too, the fear of not knowing how it will all come to be, because that is life, in all its glorious, messy Technicolor. And I know I am so lucky to be here, and that every breath I take is the good part.”

(Wow, the ’90s and early 2000s were a great period for cinema, weren’t they?)

This sounds horribly therapy-speak, but act with intention. Make your friends on purpose. Learn things on purpose. Enjoy things on purpose. Work hard on purpose. Have adventures on purpose. You’re sort of hunter-gathering for Future You

when you fall in love, be your most authentic self.”

“Don’t worry too much about the romantic love. There are other types of love that are just as important.

Travel. I know you can’t afford it, but just do it cheaply—you’ll never forget the places you go.