Hello Stranger

by Katherine Center

“My whole life, my brain was always just so … reliable. But now, not as much. I keep getting things wrong. I can’t trust myself. The whole world looks

different. And so the version of me that you’re getting right now is … kind of a mess. Much more of a mess than usual.”

But I guess that’s the great thing about life—it gives you chance after chance to rethink it all. Who you want to be. How you

want to live. What really matters.

But of course the fact it was all so hard is part of what made things better. It forced me into therapy for a while, for one. It forced me to rethink what making art meant in my life. It forced me to reevaluate some ideas that I’d never questioned about who we all are and what it all means. Because things were so overwhelming, I had no choice but to accept some help. And then I found out that letting people help you isn’t so bad. It’s definitely the kind of thing you can get used to.

Isn’t it lucky when we’re drawn to people who can teach us things we need to learn?

Knowing how much I used to be missing has taught me to pay better attention. To pause from the hustle more often and just take it all in.

But I find the antidote to that is just keeping a sense of humor. And staying humble. And laughing a lot. And doubling down on smiling. We’re all just muddling through, after all. We’re all just doing the best we can. We’re all struggling with our struggles. Nobody has the answers. And everybody, deep down, is a little bit lost.

We’re all so limited and disappointing and so, so wrong. Much of the time. Maybe even most of the time. We’re all so steeped in our own confirmation bias. We’re all so busy seeing what we expect to see. But we have our moments, too.

Sometimes we really are the best versions of ourselves. I see that about us. And I’m determined to keep seeing that about us. Because that really might be the truest thing I’ll ever know: The more good things you look for, the more you find.

It’s the structure—that “predictable” structure—that does it. Anticipating that you’re heading toward a happy ending lets you relax and look forward to better things ahead. And there’s a name for what you’re feeling when you do that. Hope.

Love stories don’t have happy endings because their authors didn’t know any better. They have happy endings because those endings let readers access a rare and precious kind of emotional bliss that you can only get from having something that matters to look forward to. Yes, misery is important. But joy is just as important. The ways we take care of each other matter just as much as the ways we let each other down. Light matters just as much as darkness. Play matters as much

as work, and kindness matters as much as cruelty, and hope matters as much as despair. More so, even. Because tragedy is a given, but joy is a choice.