If you hold back on the emotions — if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them — you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy … - Mitch Albom

You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

People are only mean when they’re threatened, and that’s what our culture does. That’s what our economy does

EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him. As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it. And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up — through distance, differences, divorce, or death.

Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.