We Are Responsible For Our Lives

Ten Angry Boys
in Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar
Sugar (Cheryl Strayed)

[W]e do not have the right to feel helpless . . . . [W]e must help ourselves. That after destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives.

One of the best books I've read post-D-Day was Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar. It's a collection of the best of Dear Sugar's advice columns, and it is amazing.

Stayed has had a hard history, and she's done a lot of things that would cause me to write her off, but instead of playing the victim, instead of excusing her own poor choices, she practices compassion - for herself, for the people who have hurt her, for the people she has hurt - and for the people writing her letters, seeking help.

To understand and respond to the letter writers, Strayed mines her history and finds life truths that are widely applicable. I must have underlined a third of the book, when only one or two letters were specifically about infidelity.

And one of these nuggets of truth - one that has become a mantra for me - is that "after destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives."

Strayed writes that sentence in the context of answering a woman who feels unable to control her anger (due to growing up with parents who raged) and is scared about how that will affect her daughters, she writes it in the context of telling a story about an admirable young man who learns how to control his anger when his parents abandon and disappoint him - but it applies to every person who has ever felt the rage that accompanies the feeling that "I don't deserve this!"

You probably didn't. Know that. Appreciate that. Allow yourself to rage and wail and mourn. Experience it, let it pass.

Know also that you must help yourself. You can't control what happens to you, but you control how you respond. Choose what kind of person you want to be.

We are responsible for our lives.