Hello Stranger

by Katherine Center

“You’re very in your head,” she said. “I’d like to see you dip into your heart.” “I like it in my head.” “But that’s not really where we live.”

It was so tempting—even still—to feel bitter that I’d lost her so soon. I had to work to turn the other way: to remember to feel grateful that I’d had her at all.

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.

The more good things you look for, the more you find.

All stories have an emotional engine that drives them.

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.

Structurally, thematically, psychologically—love stories create hope and then use it as fuel. Two people meet—and then, over the course of three hundred pages, they move from alone to together. From closed to open. From judgy to understanding. From cruel to compassionate. From needy to fulfilled. From ignored to seen. From misunderstood to appreciated. From lost to found. Predictably. That’s not a mistake. That’s a guarantee of the genre: Things will get better. And you, the reader, get to be there for it. It’s a gift the love story gives you.

love is a form of hope.

reading love stories is good for you. That believing in love is believing in hope. And doing that—choosing in this cynical world to be a person who does that—really is doing something that matters.