I’m learning.

1: Caring too much is careless.

Caring too less is too careful.

2: Beauty fades but turns into grace if you will allow it.

3: Grief never leaves. It can come back on an unexpected afternoon in an old photograph. Grief never leaves, it gets less persistent.

4: Nostalgia is an edit, a half truth mixed with some longing. That thing you remember so fondly, didn’t necessarily happen but it’s beautiful that it’s real to you.

5: Take advice from people who’ve done everything wrong. They know.

6: Boredom is the beginning of all that is interesting.

7: When you step on worms, even the blind, stringy, glistening ones…they don’t squish, they crunch underfoot like an accusation. A scolding, a lesson to never step on worms again. And when you’re careful to not step on worms, you learn to be careful about most things.

8: We can no longer appreciate nature like the poetry of Keats or H.W Longfellow or some guy you read in your school textbook and wondered what daffodils were like. When we look at nature now, our awe is tinged with worry and guilt. We are deeply unlucky to have lost something precious in more ways than one.

9: Some people are kinder to objects than they are to people.

10: Hands are clues to everything.

The secret of how much you’re loved is in how often you’re reached for. Hands betray fear, ball up in fistfuls of anger, hide inside pockets when unsure…

Hands will tell you everything.

11: Be honest with children, they’ll find out the truth anyway.