What You Wish For

by Katherine Center

I stared at the photo while Kent Buckley talked on and on, building up to a genuine rant about how the American school system had gone soft, and how we all needed to toughen up, and how if we weren’t careful, these kids were going to be a generation of hippies, nerds, and weaklings. This to a group of teachers made up exclusively of hippies, nerds, and weaklings. Yet another reason Kent Buckley was unlikable. He had no idea how to read a room.

“Okay. Listen close. Pay attention to the things that connect you with joy.”

“It’s one of the secrets to life that no one ever tells you. Joy cures everything.”

“Joy is an antidote to fear. To anger. To boredom. To sorrow.” “But you can’t just decide to feel joyful.” “True. But you can decide to do something joyful.”

“Dude—I’m not happy because it comes easily to me. I bite and scratch and claw my way toward happiness every day.”

“It’s a choice,” I went on, feeling like I needed to make him see. “A choice to value the good things that matter. A choice to rise above everything that could pull you down. A choice to look misery right in the eyes … and then give it the finger.”

“I’m telling you. I know all about darkness. That’s why I am so hell-bent, every damn day, on looking for the light.”

She knew that joy and sorrow walked side by side. She knew that being alive meant risking one for the other.

The world keeps hanging on to this idea that love is for the gullible. But nothing could be more wrong. Love is only for the brave.

Love makes you better because it’s hard. Taking risks makes you better because it’s terrifying. That’s how it works. You’ll never get anything that matters without earning it. And even what you get”—she lifted her chin in defiance—“you won’t get to keep. Joy is fleeting. Nothing lasts. That’s exactly what courage is. Knowing all that going in—and going in anyway.”