Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

As Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I live with it every day. And every day I make an effort to turn my eyes to the future instead.

Schadenfreude is one of those long German words with a very specific meaning: “Finding joy in the troubles of others.” Not particularly admirable, but quite human. Scholars like Tiffany Watt Smith have traced similar concepts across cultures and languages. The French call it joie maligne. In Japan they say, “The misfortunes of others taste like honey.”

I miss a time when truth mattered. I miss fact-based debates about policies to solve problems and improve lives. I miss the clear separation of church and state, once sacrosanct, now breached by culture warriors and Christian nationalists. I miss elections where everyone respects the will of the people, without constant attacks by sore losers and wannabe dictators.

Now, Jane says, we should see aging as a staircase: “You gain well-being, spirit, soul, wisdom, the ability to be truly intimate, and a life with intention.”

Every day matters more if there are fewer of them ahead. What are we going to do with the time we have left? How can we make, in the words of Mary Oliver, our “one wild and precious life” count?

This book reflects the mix of anxiety and optimism I feel in this strange, perilous moment. It’s a love letter to life, family, and democracy.

It’s not a coincidence that ten of the past eleven recessions have hit during Republican administrations.

Isaiah 46:4, “I will be your God throughout your lifetime, until your hair is white with age. I made you and I will carry you along and save you.”

“Hopeless people,” she told me, are “easily controlled and manipulated. But hopeful people can move mountains.”

“Fascism,” as Yale history professor Timothy Snyder put it, “is might over right, conspiracy over reality, fiction over fact, pain over law, blood over love, doom over hope.”

After Jackie died in May 1994, her son John F. Kennedy Jr. sent Bill and me a handwritten letter—and the great gift of knowing that we had given something back to Jackie when she needed it. The letter, on stationery monogrammed “JFK,” was dated June 5, 1994, two weeks after Bill and I stood with John and his sister, Caroline, as their mother was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery beside their father. The former First Son wrote, in part:

seems like ages ago since we last met at Arlington—the day, though, remains vivid in memory. I’ve been rolling these words around in my head, not quite ready to part with them. But time rolls on and I’m not getting any more eloquent, so it’s time I share them. I wanted you both to understand how much your burgeoning friendship with my mother meant to her. Since she left Washington, I believe she resisted ever connecting with it emotionally—or the institutional demands of being a former First Lady. It had much to do with the memories stirred and her desire to resist being cast in a lifelong role that didn’t quite fit. However, she seemed profoundly happy and relieved to allow herself to reconnect with it through you. With his signature boyish charm, John added a postscript: P.S. Sorry for the smudges. Being left-handed in the sweltering New York summer has its drawbacks. Bill and I have hung on to that letter all these years. And still, today, I mourn not having more time with Jackie.

Jill sent Melania a birthday card that April. And Melania reciprocated two months later when Jill turned seventy. It’s not nothing. Not when all of us, as families and communities and as a nation, have been so battered in recent years. Any reminder that we’re all human and we’re all in this together—I’ll take it.

Being informed is crucial, but stepping away from the news when it’s got you down is an important part of staying in the fight over the long term. Big Tech’s algorithms are designed to keep us hooked 24/7, but that’s not a healthy way to consume news and will only lead to burnout.