Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

by Anne Lamott

Looking back on it, I’m not convinced that my parents’ smoking and drinking and bad marriage produced an ideal environment for a possibly already tense fetus.

Appalling is harder because of the natural fixation that you can rescue your kids, and ought to. Your good ideas for them would certainly straighten them out and help them make healthier choices. These would help you enjoy life more, too, so what’s the harm in your little suggestions, demands, funding?

The harm is in the unwanted help or helping them when they need to figure things out for themselves. Help is the sunny side of control. There is nothing outside them, nothing they can date, buy, or achieve, that will fill the hole inside them or help them hit the reset button. But it’s very productive of you to try, and try, and try, although they tend to get sicker, as do you. Plus, they start to hate you. So there’s that.

How did we all get so screwed up? Putting aside our damaged parents, poverty, abuse, addiction, disease, and other unpleasantries, life just damages people. There is no way around this. Not all the glitter and concealer in the world can cover it up. We may have been raised in the illusion that if we played our cards right, life would work out. But it didn’t, it doesn’t.

Most of my spiritual breakthroughs have been against my will. I am mortal, impermanent, imperfect, scared, often uptight and even petty, but wow, what a beautiful sunset.