Tiny Beautiful Things
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
There are some books which stay with you because your entire perspective, your whole heart and your vast mind are altered forever.
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life by Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed is one of those books for me.
Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can't pay the bills - and it can be great: you've had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar - the once anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild - is the person thousands turn to for advice.
Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before published columns and a new introduction by Steven Almond. Rich with humour, insight and compassion - and absolute honesty - this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
I could not have encountered this masterpiece at a better time. I shed buckets of tears and learned more about life because of Cheryl's words. I let go of despair and welcomed her words brimming with love and empathy.
These are my favourite passages from the book.
On being yourself:
"Trust yourself. It's Sugar's golden rule. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true."
"Do you know what that is, sweet pea? To be humble? The word comes from the Latin words humilis and humus. To be down low. To be of the earth. To be on the ground. "
"If you had a two-sided chalkboard in your living room I'd write humility on one side and surrender on the other for you."
On love:
"The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love."
"We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright - to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying."
"The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that."
"But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love you've got."
On work and self-worth:
"What is a prestigious college? What did attending such a school allow you to believe about yourself? What assumptions do you have about the colleges that you would not describe as prestigious? What sorts of people go to prestigious colleges and not prestigious colleges? Do you believe that you had a right to a free "first-rate" education? What do you make of the people who received educations that you would not characterise as first-rate?"
"The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your "limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude" is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some ways inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you."
"You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have it give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that's all."
"Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue."
On moving forward:
"The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It's strength. It's nerve. And "if your Nerve deny you -," as Emily Dickinson wrote, "go above your Nerve."
"When it comes to our children, we do not have the luxury of despair. If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next time you fail. I hope I will too. Remembering that is the most important work as parents we can possibly do."
On life:
"Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naive pomposity."
"The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will."
"You get no points for living, I tell my students. It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of that the story means. This is also true in life. Or at least it's true when one wishes to live an ever-evolving life, such as you and I do, sweet pea. What this requires of us is that we don't get tangled up in the living, even when we in fact feel woefully tangled up. It demands that we focus not only on what's happening in our stories, but also what our stories are about."
Thank you, Sugar. Thank you, Cheryl.
Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before published columns and a new introduction by Steven Almond. Rich with humour, insight and compassion - and absolute honesty - this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
I could not have encountered this masterpiece at a better time. I shed buckets of tears and learned more about life because of Cheryl's words. I let go of despair and welcomed her words brimming with love and empathy.
These are my favourite passages from the book.
On being yourself:
"Trust yourself. It's Sugar's golden rule. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true."
"Do you know what that is, sweet pea? To be humble? The word comes from the Latin words humilis and humus. To be down low. To be of the earth. To be on the ground. "
"If you had a two-sided chalkboard in your living room I'd write humility on one side and surrender on the other for you."
On love:
"The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love."
"We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright - to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying."
"The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that."
"But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love you've got."
On work and self-worth:
"What is a prestigious college? What did attending such a school allow you to believe about yourself? What assumptions do you have about the colleges that you would not describe as prestigious? What sorts of people go to prestigious colleges and not prestigious colleges? Do you believe that you had a right to a free "first-rate" education? What do you make of the people who received educations that you would not characterise as first-rate?"
"The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your "limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude" is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some ways inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you."
"You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have it give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that's all."
"Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue."
On moving forward:
"The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It's strength. It's nerve. And "if your Nerve deny you -," as Emily Dickinson wrote, "go above your Nerve."
"When it comes to our children, we do not have the luxury of despair. If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next time you fail. I hope I will too. Remembering that is the most important work as parents we can possibly do."
On life:
"Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naive pomposity."
"The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will."
"You get no points for living, I tell my students. It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of that the story means. This is also true in life. Or at least it's true when one wishes to live an ever-evolving life, such as you and I do, sweet pea. What this requires of us is that we don't get tangled up in the living, even when we in fact feel woefully tangled up. It demands that we focus not only on what's happening in our stories, but also what our stories are about."
Thank you, Sugar. Thank you, Cheryl.
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