The Book of Lost and Found

by Lucy Foley

I think it often happens like this. You wait, and hope, until eventually the hoping seems in vain and the thing you wish for begins to seem impossible. You try to forget, to move on. And sometimes, once you have gone through this painful process, by some peculiar alchemy, it happens.

I expected Stafford to laugh and tell me I was still young, that I must wait my turn: the stock response of those who have accomplished in life what they want to—to whom, with the perspective their success lends them, the path looks easy. But he considered it seriously. “I know it’s difficult,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve been where you are now. The most important thing is to continue to do the thing you want to, to keep battling on. That, in my opinion, is the main part of the struggle. Most give up when it seems too difficult.”

It is, then, perhaps, the feeling of finding again that one soul that speaks clearly to his own.

Because, if the nature of the work is right, there is great reward to be found. The feeling that one has a place in the world, that one is useful in some small way, is not to be underrated.

I think we carry all of our past selves with us, in tight layers. Somewhere within you is that girl, however many other, new selves you may have grown in the years since. She’s what holds you together, at the very center.”