How to have it all, when you can never have it all.

I met this little girl who took a liking to me. Naturally, she felt compelled to pull out things from her pockets and gift them to me. “This is everything you’ll need,” she said handing me a pebble that was smooth, round, grey and cold.

She then pressed a feather into my palm and whispered, “here’s another everything.” A dead moth came next and I was afraid to touch it, its wings were already turning to dust. “Anything else, I’ll need?” I asked her to amuse her. “Wait,” she responded urgently, and handed me a crumpled toffee wrapper by her feet. “This is the most important thing,” she said.

I pocketed these things and asked her with mock concern, “but what about you, you have nothing left?”

“That’s OK, I’ll find new things,” she replied quite seriously and went back to scratching purple lines onto paper.

Now I wish I could tell you that my pockets grew heavy with her generosity, and I had an epiphany- “Wait, do I already have everything I’ll ever need?” But no, I’m dissatisfied most days of the week and poorly equipped to deal with the world without enough breakfast in me.

And even on good days, when I’m feeling nice about life and such, a sticky, prickly worry creeps over me. A worry that nothing good is permanent and everything is likely to go to shit in minutes.

This is when I remind myself about what should have been obvious (because even little girls know it). That it’s really OK, because you’ll find new things.