Tiny Beautiful Things: Notes

I read Cheryl Strayed when I was having breakfast, walking to work, in between experiments, during lunch. I laughed and cried and felt oh-so human.

In this book, Strayed under the name of Sugar replies to 1000s of letters from people who are deeply troubled, happy, sad, angry, confused and a multitude of other emotions.

You will be surprised how much you can relate to the stories of people you’ve never met and situations that you’ve never been in. Underlying feelings are all the same (we are all humans after all).

Here I compiled some of my favourite lines from this heart-melting book.

You will also notice that everything you highlight, everything that resonates with you is not the same for anyone else out there. It is not even the same for you in a couple of years.

• The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.
• Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted.
• We are all entitled to our opinions and religious believes, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people.
• Trust yourself. It is Sugar’s golden rule. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.
• The story of human intimacy is the one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light.
• Who does what a friend tells her to do? I can’t say I ever have, even when later I fully recognized that I should have.
• Our minds are small, but our hearts are big. Just about every one of us has fucked up at one point or another.
• Humans are beautifully imperfect and complex. We’re horny, ass-saving, ego-driven drug fiends, among other, more noble things.
• Of this I am absolutely sure: Do not reach the era of child rearing and real jobs with a guitar case full of crushing regret for all the things you wished you’d done in your youth. I know too many people who didn’t do those things. They all end up mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions of the people they intended to be.

• Have you read Shakespeare’s Rome and Juliet yet? People die because they want who they want. They do all kinds of crazy, stupid, sweet, tender, amazing, self-destructive things. You aren’t going to make anyone “see the light and realize that what they’re doing is wrong”.
• The reality is that, regardless of circumstances, most moms are alternately blissed out by their love for their children and utterly overwhelmed by the spectacular amount of sacrifice they require.
• You are so goddamned young. Which means about eight of ten things you have decided about yourself will over time prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you’ll look back in twenty years and howl.

• Because in your twenties you’re becoming who you’re going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.
• (About women): We claimed the agency, we granted ourselves the authority, we gathered the accolades, but we never stopped worrying about how our asses looked in our jeans.
• There are so many things to be tortured about, sweet pea. So many torturous things in this life. Don’t let a man who doesn’t love you be one of them.
• I know it’s a kick in the pants to hear that the problem is you, but it’s also fucking fantastic. You are, after all, the only person you can change.
• No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they’re in one.
• Most people don’t cheat because they are cheaters. They cheat because they are people.
• Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work.