Dear Sugar,

WTF, WTF, WTF?

I am asking this question as it applies to everything every day.

Best,

WTF

This is an actual letter published in Cheryl Strayed’s tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar. In her response, Strayed tells the story of a childhood trauma and how that trauma followed her into adulthood. She ends her response saying,

“That’s what the F it was. The F was mine. And the F is yours too, WTF. That question does not apply ‘to everything every day.’ If it does, you’re wasting your life. If it does, you’re a lazy coward, and you’re not a lazy coward. Ask better questions, sweet pea. The F is your life. Answer it.”

I say WTF a lot right now. The pandemic. Abortion rights. Voting rights. Racial injustice. The environment. My WTF list can go on and on and include both global and individual concerns. (I guess at a certain point there is no distinction between the global and individual.) Strayed’s response is priceless. Saying WTF too much can lead to perpetual white hot anger, cynicism, and paralysis — a wasting of a life. She asks WTF to do something else.

The idea that we must ask better questions and answer them, as Strayed suggests, makes sense to me. We must weigh and judge, feel fully what we carry on our hearts, and find clarity. Then. We must act. For yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we must act. That’s where courage comes in. That is what Strayed is getting at when she says too many WTFs make us lazy cowards. We must pick an arena and be in it. In big or small ways. Fiercely breaking our gentle hearts. Times are too dire, and our capacity for love is too powerful and immense, to be lazy cowards. We are not lazy cowards.