She understands that attention is the first and final act of love, and that the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil … - Cheryl Strayed

...the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.

The ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.

ou let time pass. That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you’re okay.

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...Remembering that is the most important work as parents we can possibly do.

All through my childhood and adolescence I’d asked and asked, making her describe those scenes and more, wanting to know who said what and how, what she’d felt inside while it was going on, where so-and-so stood and what time of day it was. And she’d told me, with reluctance or relish, laughing and asking why on earth I wanted to know. I wanted to know. I couldn’t explain. But now that she was dying, I knew everything. My mother was in me already. Not just the parts of her that I knew, but the parts of her that had come before me too.