Almost Everything. Notes on Hope.
by Anne Lamott
Added:
2024 Oct 15
Description
“I am stockpiling antibiotics for the Apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen, Anne Lamott admits at the beginning of Almost Everything. Despair and uncertainty surround us: in the news, in our families, and in ourselves. But even when life is at its bleakest - when we are, as she puts it, “doomed, stunned, exhausted, and over-caffeinated” - the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. “All truth is paradox,” Lamott writes, “and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change.” That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but “to do what Wendell Berry wrote: ‘Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.’”
In this profound and funny book, Lamott calls for each of us to rediscover the nuggets of hope and wisdom that are buried within us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined. Divided into short chapters that explore life’s essential truths, Almost Everything pinpoints these moments of insight as it shines an encouraging light forward.
Candid and caring, insightful and sometimes hilarious, Almost Everything is the book we need and that only Anne Lamott can write.
Notes & Highlights
TWO: Inside Job
There is almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you are waiting for a donor organ. You can’t buy, achieve, or date serenity. Peace of mind is an inside job, unrelated to fame, fortune, or whether your partner loves you. Horribly, what this means is that it is also an inside job for the few people you love most desperately in the world. We cannot arrange lasting safety or happiness for our most beloved people. They have to find their own ways, their own answers. Not one single person in history has gotten an alcoholic sober. (Maybe you’ll be the first. But—and I say this with love—I doubt it.) If it is someone else’s problem, you probably don’t have the solution.
Jung wrote that when we look outside ourselves, we dream. When we look inside, we wake up.
THREE: Humans
An old woman in twelve-step recovery once told me that while there is an elaborate prayer in one of the steps, of turning one’s life and all results over to the care of God, as each person understands God, she and some of the old-timers secretly pray upon waking, “Whatever,” and pray before falling asleep, “Oh, well.”
SIX: Writing
I tell the kids an old story: Fifty-five years ago, when my older brother’s fourth-grade term paper on birds was due the next day and he hadn’t started, my dad sat him down with his Audubon books, paper, and pencils. My brother was in tears. Dad said to him, “Just take it bird by bird, buddy.” All he had to do was read and then write about pelicans in his own words. Then chickadees. Then dark-eyed juncos. My brother drew beautifully. Bird by bird, magical things come to be.
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