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

by Mitch Albom

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.

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

Except an old man looking back on his years is not a little girl looking forward to hers. And, as it turns out, you can have more than one journey of your life.

A child is both an anchor and a set of wings.

Time changes. With a little one, it is no longer your own.

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.

Everything in this world is music if you can hear it.

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.