Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

by Anne Lamott

growing older has provided me with a measure of perspective and equilibrium, and a lovely, long-term romance.

We’re doomed, stunned, exhausted, and overcaffeinated. And yet, outside my window, yellow roses bloom, and little kids horse around, making a joyous racket.

the truth is that we are beloved, even in our current condition, by someone; we have loved and been loved.

Love has bridged the high-rises of despair we were about to fall between. Love has been a penlight in the blackest, bleakest nights. Love has been a wild animal, a poultice, a dinghy, a coat. Love is why we have hope.

Love and goodness and the world’s beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope.

T. S. Eliot wrote, “Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.” We long for this, and yet we check our smartphones every ten minutes for news, texts, distraction.

But life holds on. Little by little, nature pulls us back, back to growing. This is life. We are life.

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.

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.

Everything true in the world has innate contradictions.

Try a wider reality, through curiosity, awareness, and breath. Try actually being here. What a concept.

But truth is too wild and complex to be contained in one answer, so Jesus often responded with a question or a parable.

We are consumed by the most intense love for one another and the joy of living, along with the grief and terror that we and our babies will know unbelievable hurt:

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.

Niels Bohr wrote, “The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth.”

I have known hell, and I have also known love. Love was bigger.

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.

There is almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you are waiting for a donor organ.

You can’t buy, achieve, or date serenity. Peace of mind is an inside job, unrelated to fame, fortune, or whether your partner loves you.

If it is someone else’s problem, you probably don’t have the solution.

When we discovered who we truly are, through love or a teacher, new life began. We discovered, now and then, our inclusion in the huge, beautiful, weird world, in new friends, communities, the most ordinary elements: we break the bread, bless the cup, and share.

Could you say this about yourself right now, that you have immense and intrinsic value, at your current weight and income level, while waiting to hear if you got the job or didn’t, or sold your book or didn’t?

Jung wrote that when we look outside ourselves, we dream. When we look inside, we wake up.

Everyone is capable of making at least one friend,

Ram Dass said that if you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.

There’s just no way around this. Even when life sorts itself out and starts to work and we revel in what is working, the cosmic banana peel awaits. Without this reality, there would be no great art or comedy.

The lesson here is that there is no fix. There is, however, forgiveness. To forgive yourselves and others constantly is necessary. Not only is everyone screwed up, but everyone screws up.

We are hardwired with curiosity inside us, because life knew that this would keep us going even in bad sailing.

We see the newborn energy of the universe most flagrantly in the sea and in the entire Jell-O-y wiggle of a baby.

Adults rarely have the imagination or energy of children, but we do have one another, and nature, and old black-and-white movies, and the ultimate secret weapon, books.

“Just don’t let them get you to hate them.”

Haters want us to hate them, because hate is incapacitating. When we hate, we can’t operate from our real selves, which is our strength. Now that I think of it, this is such a great reason to give up our hate—as revenge, to deprive the haters of what they want.

Awareness means showing up, availing oneself of the world, so there is the chance that empathy will step up to bat, even in this lifetime. If we work hard and are lucky, we may come to see everyone as precious, struggling souls.

Empathy begins when we realize how much alike we all are.

I don’t know if my last day here will be next Thursday or in twenty years. Whenever that day comes, I want to be living, insofar as possible, in the Wendell Berry words “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts,” and I want to have had dessert.

Life is made up of these mosaic moments, seemingly meaningless details that tug on your sleeve to get your attention.

Writers save the world—or at any rate, they saved me and everyone I’m close to.

It’s ridiculous how hard life is. Denial and avoidance are unsuccessful strategies, but truth and awareness mend.

I tell the six-year-olds that if they want to have great lives, they need to read a lot or listen to the written word. If they rely only on their own thinking, they will not notice the power that is all around them, the force-be-with-you kind of power. Reading and writing help us take the blinders off so we can look around and say “Wow,” so we can look at life and our lives with care, and curiosity, and attention to detail, which are what will make us happy and less afraid.

It turns out there is not just this—there is also that, over there. For example, at a memorial service, there is deep grief in the room, but also gratitude, love, emptiness, and many kinds of food.

Perspective doesn’t reduce the gravitas; it increases reverence.

Anytime you investigate how scary and bad loss is, it becomes a lot less bad, and a lot less bad is a small miracle.

Somehow, as we get older, death becomes as sacred as birth, and while we don’t exactly welcome it, death becomes a friend.

At eighty, she knows you don’t put things off.

I love Ram Dass’s line that when all is said and done, we are all just walking each other home.

Your inside person does not have an age. It is all the ages you have ever been and the age you are at this very moment.

Fundamentalism, in all its forms, is ninety percent of the reason the world is so terrifying.

Saint John wrote that God is Love, that anytime you experience kindness and generosity, hope, patience and caring, you are in the presence of God.

most people overuse things like food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, work, and porn to avoid what they don’t want to feel—and mostly what we don’t want to feel is fear.

Secretly overeating serves the same purpose as dieting: to numb bad feelings, although then, of course, it causes shame and regret.