Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

by Anne Lamott

Love and goodness and the world’s beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope. Yet no matter how much we recycle, believe in our Priuses, and abide by our local laws, we see that our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by greed and cruel stupidity.

became jumpy perfectionists.

Don’t be an asshole, and try to remember people’s names, especially those people with no power or cachet, and seek beauty through binoculars, books, records.

I have just always found it extremely hard to be here, on this side of eternity, because of, well, other people; and death.

And we’re rarely all alone. People come and go in our lives, surround us with their best selves, take us to the beach, to a bookstore, out for ice cream. So little bits of life and grace, time, habits, duties, a phone call, more time, all filter in to the seed under the concrete.

We can change. People say we can’t, but we do when the stakes or the pain is high enough. And when we do, life can change. It offers more of itself when we agree to give up our busyness.

The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart said that if the soul could have known God without the world, God never would have created the world.

Every day we’re in the grip of the impossible conundrum: the truth that it’s over in a blink, and we may be near the end, and that we have to live as if it’s going to be okay, no matter what.

Why would you take off the cloak voluntarily? It’s so comfortable and impressive, at least to you. You let it drop or life yanks it off, and when you notice it’s gone, it doesn’t feel great. You begin to feel the cold, prickly wind, and people can see your veiny ankles. But what comes in is fresh air on our skin, which startles us awake. We’ll never again be as open and vibrational as babies, but maybe now we’ll be a little more present and aware.

Usually this holiness takes a backseat to our toxic self-obsessed nattering monkey minds.

That is the paradox, that aliveness is chemical, electrical, and sacred. Aliveness is what we find way deep down inside, for a moment here, an interval there, those pulses that go on inside us all the time, in our homes, in our environment, and in the universe, the continuum from which we are so often isolated in our self-conscious kiosks, by habit and upbringing. The moment is truth, and so is the continuum.

We remember that because truth is paradox, something beautiful is also going on. So while trusting that and waiting for revelation, we do the next right thing. We tell the truth. We march, make dinner, have rummage sales to raise relief funds. Whoever arranges such things keeps distracting us and shifting things around so we don’t get stuck in hopelessness: we can take one loud, sucking,

We remember mustard seeds, that the littlest things will have great results. We do the smallest, realest, most human things. We water that which is dry.