Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

by Mitch Albom

The person who brought her departed the same day. So perhaps this is what she means. You can forget your loved ones. Or at least not come back for them.

It takes a special strength to take care of a child, Chika, and a whole different strength to admit you cannot.

There are many kinds of selfishness in this world, but the most selfish is hoarding time, because none of us know how much we have, and it is an affront to God to assume there will be more.

Gradually, I had to face the fact that I could not control everything, no matter how fast my eyes darted from spot to spot.

“Dying is only one thing to be sad about, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else”—that

With the healthy, I repeated Morrie’s mantra of pretending each day to have a bird on your shoulder, a bird that you ask, “Is today the day I die?”—and to live each day as if the answer were “Yes.”

Ambition is not something I ever warned you about, Chika, but I have learned it can overtake you gradually, like clouds moving across the sun, until, consumed by pursuing it, you get used to a dimmer existence.

The most precious thing you can give someone is your time, Chika, because you can never get it back. When you don’t think about getting it back, you’ve given it in love.

Everything in this world is music if you can hear it. Make a joyful noise, the psalm says.

One of the best things a child can do for an adult is to draw them down, closer to the ground, for clearer reception to the voices of the earth.

Look. It’s one of the shortest sentences in the English language. But we don’t really look, Chika. Not as adults. We look over. We glance. We move on.

Children wonder at the world. Parents wonder at their children’s wonder. In so doing, we are all together young.

Surely there is a future, and hope will not be cut off.

Remember how you fantasized about getting married, Chika? Well, when people get married, they share the love of a couple. But when children arrive, they create another love, not just for the new additions, but for the new entity they have created. The family. It is not better than a couple’s love, it’s complementary, forged with a new appreciation, and a wider, expansive heart.

What we carry defines who we are. And the effort we make is our legacy.