The future has an ancient heart.

Carlo Levi

Cheryl Strayed’s tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugarfell into my hands at a bookstore years ago. I had just moved to a different part of the country. I knew no one. I had left my job. Boxes were piled in our apartment, and I wanted books. I wanted friends, and books have always been friends. tiny beautiful things appeared.

I have been revisiting tiny beautiful things recently, as I often do when I feel lonely and afraid. The first letter I re-read was from a university Creative Writing teacher requesting Sugar (Strayed) write a commencement address/letter to her mostly-English-major students. She had read Sugar letters to her class before, and thought Sugar could speak wisely to their existential angst and fear. Sugar opens her letter with the Levi quote above. She goes on to explain life’s balance between knowing and confusion, curves and straight lines, and love and work. This letter and response speak to me deeply as an English major, writer, and traveler on this earth of expectations and uncertainty. I think it also speaks to our quest for love and meaning in general, that is bigger than graduations, weddings, and is perhaps is the essence of births and deaths, and beginnings and ends.

“And you are going to be all right not because you majored in English or didn’t and not because your plan is to apply to law school or don’t, but because all right is almost always where we eventually land, even if we fuck up entirely along the way.”

It is always reassuring to hear you are going to be all right. In the midst of change. You are going to be all right. When you make mistakes. You are going to be all right. When the margin for error feels painfully narrow. You are going to be all right. You you forget the steel and substance of which you are made. You are going to be all right. In times of intense chaos and change, hold tightly to the belief you are going to be all right.

“You have to do what you have to do. … Or just close your eyes and remember everything you already know. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits.”

I have recently read, “Past in prologue.” This quote takes that a step further. Once we recall the wisdom gained in prior experience – wisdom born of truth and knowing – we can hold the experience – good or bad – close and allow the past to be the path to crazy beauty. Doing what we have to do is not up for debate on our path to crazy beauty. We simply do it. Forgetting what we already know does not happen on our path to crazy beauty. We simply remember. As a writer, I believe words are a mysterious starlight guide. Living, and then reflecting through writing, is my path to crazy beauty.

“I hope that when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me as I do everything that matters.”

When I was searching for s subject for my doctoral dissertation, trying to figure out what I just could not live without studying and writing about, my dissertation chair asked me, “What books do you schlep around?” I had been schlepping around books by education philosopher Maxine Greene in blistering Texas heat for years at that point. Her work included the concept of wide-awakeness. Much to the dismay of my doctoral exam committee, who tried to point me toward studying standardized testing as a pragmatic path toward a solid academic career, I chose to study what I carried with me – wide-awakess. I still continue my bookish examination. I still carry wide-awakeness with me.

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