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But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.
“Sometimes books don’t find us until the right time.”
“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”
A man is not his own island. Or at least a man is not optimally his own island.
To connect, my dear little nerd. Only connect.
Thankfully, she repeats, “Dad.” Yes, Dad. Dad is what I am. Dad is what I became. The father of Maya. Maya’s dad. Dad. What a word. What a little big word. What a word and what a world! He is crying. His heart is too full, and no words to release it. I know what words do, he thinks. They let us feel less.
“Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love.”
“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”