These Precious Days: Essays

by Ann Patchett

Death always thinks of us

eventually. The trick is to find the joy in the interim, and make good use of the days we have.

“Our capacity for giving is huge.”

We speak of ourselves as being blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past.

Throughout the course of life there is a long line of fathers and sons, parents and children, servants and masters, forgiven and forgivers, and at different moments we are called on to take up one role and then the other. When we do it right,

we are bearing Christ’s example in mind.

The trick is in the decision to wake up every morning and meet the world again with love.

We will never know all the things other people worry about.