Someone Else's Shoes

by Jojo Moyes

has left her feeling like the earth can shift under your feet without a moment’s notice so that nothing in the world, no happiness, feels secure.

There were Sams in every office, the people who quietly, and without drama, kept everything running smoothly, willing to step in if extra hours were required, satisfied enough by what they did not to require ego-stroking or excessive praise.

if you cannot change your situation, then you have no choice. You can only change how you think about it.”

“Well—everything’s a variation of that, right? All human relationships are transactional in some sense.”

for the first time in a year, Sam had gazed at her friend and not felt a vague, underlying panic at the possibility that Andrea would catch a chill, that her lack of appetite suggested some sinister development, that she would inhale some random bacterium floating by and be felled by it in her fragile, neutropenic state.

This resonated. My daily thoughts after Tom’s ordeal.