Gone Before Goodbye

by Reese Witherspoon

To paraphrase Eminem, a normal life is boring.

But superstardom’s close to post mortem, it only grows harder…

Scratch the surface of a person doing good works, and you’ll find someone who fears the mundane and conventional.

“Enjoy the smaller moments,” her father had often told her. “That’s where life is lived.”

Greed is not ‘I need more’—it’s the fear of losing what you already have. Of going back. So you hold on tighter and keep trying to climb up. Because that’s the only way you can go. Life won’t let you stand still. You are either on your way up or you’re on your way down. And you’ll do anything not to go down.”

‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.’”

Life is always a high school cafeteria.

“We all have crutches,” Sharon says. “We all have something to numb or distract or get us through the day.

So Grief bides its time. It lulls you, makes you think it’s not such a threat anymore, and then when your defenses are down—when a plane simply starts down a runway, for example—boom, it attacks.

“Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex—no one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of—and yet we are convinced we can read other people. We think that we know what’s going on inside others, what they are really feeling or experiencing or thinking, but they can’t tell the same about us. That’s obviously impossible.

Women often are better at focusing on what matters, at understanding the mission. They don’t let their egos get involved the way men do.