dear hilary: your person

Dear Hilary,You know that thing about "Meredith and Cristina"? You know, the person who you go to with the weird problems that you don't want to tell anyone else about? The person who laughs at your not so funny stories? The person you trust with the secret from eighth grade and from eighty-eight? I want to know how you find someone like that. How do you create that kind of world for and with someone else?Love,Meredith?Dear Meredith,When I was in fifth grade I had a best friend. We drank tea together on picnic blankets in my backyard and played in the forbidden living room in her house with the real tea cups her mother collected from England. We made up games on the playground at recess - rode horses in our minds and saved the world. We swapped secrets, bad haircuts. I modeled my Anglican first communion after her Catholic one, and when she bought a bright white dress splashed with pink roses, I had to have one, too. I can't tell you how many years it was that we rode bikes or walked or begged for rides just down the street - how many times we both wished for a dog, how many boys we first began to like, how many things we imagined together. How we swore we'd be best friends forever.So in fifth grade, when I got onto the bus in October to ride home from school, and this best friend, her hair now in one of those sparkly silver scrunchies that the junior cheerleaders wore, and her tight jeans from the Limited Too or somewhere in the mall I didn't shop, she didn't sit with me? The world shook.She sat two seats behind me, with another girl. She looked at me when I looked back with a look of spite or satisfaction, seeing me in my homemade hat quaking at the sight of her in the back with the cheerleaders and junior football players. She laughed as the girl whispered in her ear. I turned around, bright red. Suddenly everything felt wrong: my hand-me-down sneakers and stirrup pants (yes, I still wore those), my homemade things, my old backpack, my lack of cheerleading, my recorder stuck into my backpack for the private lessons that I longed for and pretended not to want...And all because of that hope that lives inside us (inside you, too) that we will find kindred spirits and homes for our hearts in the people we love.So when you ask me how to find that person, I want to tell the oh-so-obvious-but-nonetheless-true thing: you must be that person. Not always in your daily living with them (you can't be a Cristina to everyone, nor can everyone be a Meredith to you) - but in making your heart a little deeper, your arms a little wider, the space around you an invitation. Don't be swayed by the people who are so dazzling and lovely sitting in the back of the bus. Don't be tempted by the promises of great pictures of you having such a fabulous time that everyone who sees them will wish they were you, having that fabulous time if those people aren't truly warm, loving, anxious to know you. Don't worry about hand-me-downs on you or on the girl two bus seats ahead of you.Instead, listen close to the people around you. Practice love in your conversations with them - practice courage in sharing with them. Let the whole of you be poured into creating space around you that is full of love (yes, that also means full of frustration and wonder and sadness and loneliness and sitting in the midst of crappy situations and not knowing answering but being asked anyway).Fill the space around you with deep love. And then, you'll find, what makes Cristina and Meredith special isn't rare like the AB- blood type: it's rare because it's not always practiced. It's not always chased after in friendship. But we could: and, in beautiful moments, we do.You sound like you want to chase after it, Meredith. I think you won't have to go too far before you find it.Love,hilary

dear hilary: don't live in an abandoned house

Dear Hilary,What would you say to someone if they told you that they had trouble moving on after the end of something? What would you say, if, say, someone told you that they had trouble moving on after a breakup? What would you say, if, say, someone told you that they kept wondering if it was even possible to find what they're looking for, or if it just sailed away?Love,The someoneDear The someone,I'm so sorry that a beautiful thing ended for you. And I am so very sorry that one ended in your life, that it was one that made you happy or excited or terrified or all three. I'm sorry for the times it made you lie in bed awake wondering if you were absolutely the most unloveable thing to walk the earth. I'm sorry for how it made you narrow your eyes at the beautiful Ralph Lauren clad couples holding hands while drinking cappuccino out of tiny cups at Eastern Market. I'm sorry for what it made you think when you saw more engagement announcements or baby shower invitations or "generally taking the next socially approved step into adulthood!" posters plastered all over your friends' lives. I'm sorry for the small seeds of bitterness that it left behind.I was talking to a wise woman in my life the other day about just these things, and finally, after going around and around in circles, I finally blurted out - "Look! Doesn't it prove that I'm not worth it? If I put myself out there, if I risked it, if I was there, caring, and he didn't want it? ISN'T THAT THE FINAL MEASURE OF ME, AFTER ALL?"And that stopped me, Someone. It stopped me dead. Where had that self emerged from? Where was that voice whispering in my ear that all those Ralph Lauren couples and socially approved Facebook statuses and altogether enviable people in their gleaming kitchens and offices and parks throwing Frisbees with their beautiful children - they got it right, and me, well, where is the next open cat adoption agency and bottle of cheap wine?When a beautiful thing ends, we often do one of two things: we blame them or we blame us. Sometimes we blame both. We tell ourselves that if only we were cooler, groovier, more fabulous, they wouldn't have left. It's a flaw inside us. Or we tell ourselves that if only they weren't such a jerk, a tool, a massive loser, they wouldn't have left. It's a flaw inside them. Or we tell ourselves, as we sit in front of the mirror thinking, "there can't be anything worse" - we say it's just both of us in this mess: I'm not worthy, and you're a tool. And the cycle goes round and round until we can't breathe for all the lies in our heads.The beautiful thing ended because of both of you and because of neither of you. The beautiful thing ended because it was not what is. It ended because, well, it ended. Don't go too near that abandoned house just yet. Let it stand for a little while. Let it have its winter, and its summer, its falling leaves and its budding peonies. The beautiful thing that just ended is your abandoned house. Don't drive by it every day, sweetheart. Don't live in the abandoned house, wandering its hallways, telling yourself that this was where he said he loved me or this is where we kissed  or but if I had just... or if only he... You'll only drive yourself crazy looking for answers where you can't find them.What you must tell yourself, even if you don't believe it yet, is that this is not the end of your worth. This is not about your worth. This is not about your wonder. This is not about your gorgeous, glowing, terrible, messy, miracle self. This is just about two people who met, who loved, who fought, and who, ultimately, abandoned the house that was their relationship. Maybe forever, maybe just for a time.That's what this is: your beautiful self and their beautiful self, not living in that house anymore. There isn't an answer about your ultimate value in that house. There isn't an answer about what went wrong and who did what. There isn't an answer about whether someone will love you tomorrow or the next day.There is just you, bending beneath the weight of this new experience. There is just you, building something out of what has happened to you. There is just you, not living in the abandoned house anymore, but walking forward, into the world, into the light, into what lies ahead.I believe you'll wake up, many mornings from now, and find that you see the story a bit more like that: two people, who loved, and left, and who are transformed but not undone. I believe you will glow more because of it. I believe you'll be radiant walking forward, and you'll kiss the abandoned house goodbye. Because you're worth so much. And you'll know it.Love,hilary

dear hilary: lights across the ocean

This week, dear readers, I want to really, truly, formally, in-the-oh-so-nerve-wracking-way, to journey with me for a bit. Would you think about a question, something you want to ponder with me? Something that you wonder about in your life, something you want to sit down and talk about over peppermint mochas? And would you think about sending it my way? I'm trying to practice this big dream of mine, and I would love your help.Dear Hilary,This note is long overdue and I would much prefer a conversation over coffee, but seeing that that isn't possible... I want to write, I do, someday maybe even teach, but I never know how much of my life to share and how much to keep private. Hilary, how much do people want to know? How do we make sense of past suffering when it is oh so private but oh so part of who we are today? I don't know.Love,Privacy Settings?Dear Privacy?,I've been thinking about your question this week. It came during a time in the week where I happened to be thinking about giving up talking about boys for Advent. In the weeks where we prepare for Christmas, I thought that it might be a good idea to fast from the long, wandering conversations I have with myself about my singleness and whether that boy likes me or whether I like them. I have shared it with too many people at this point anyway, I thought to myself as I drank orange juice at 10:15 while sitting at my office desk. Not everyone needs to know what you long for. Not everyone wants to know that you wonder whether you'll ever get married. It'd be better to keep it private.Those thoughts rolled around in my head, and then I got your beautiful question, and I wanted to write to you (and to me, since both of us are in this together), and in some way tell you (and me too) that we should share more.An immediate caveat: sharing doesn't mean that everyone needs every detail. This isn't all or nothing, where to open the door to a personal conversation means you are required to reveal everything that ever happened. You are allowed to choose how you tell this story.We are tempted to think that if we keep some details from some people, we have somehow cheated the system. Whether you draw a detailed penciled sketch of the story, or only a rough outline, is up to you. And you know the story best; you'll know the details that aren't needed and the ones that are. You'll practice this discernment each time you go to tell a story. You'll get better at it. When you are a teacher and a writer you will practice it with each word. You will ask yourself, "why do I want/need/feel in my gut that it is right to say this?" Let that voice be a guiding star. After all, you want to share the story for a bigger purpose than getting it off your chest. You want to share your suffering, your triumph, your loss and your gain, for the bigger purpose of sharing your self.  You want to give people a window into you. You ask me how much people want to know? I will tell you what I have found: people worth revealing yourself to are the people who care about the story because you're in it, not because it's juicy or difficult or there's a great twist at the end. The people who will love your story best will be eager to make as much space for your story as you want it to take up. They will be patient as you unfold it slowly before them. They will love what you share and what you keep private.But the bigger purpose of being known by others, of letting them in on how you have become who you are?That is always worth doing. We aren't here to keep the wonder of who we are hidden away. We aren't here to remain apart from each other. We aren't supposed to sail out onto a dark ocean utterly alone. No, Privacy, I think we're supposed to do the opposite. I think we are supposed to shine beacons of light to each other with our stories. You know that feeling, too? We can say to each other as we lament about our singleness or our lack of work or our student's inability to write a research paper. You aren't alone. I'm here, too. Together, sharing our selves, our lights will blink back and forth across this vast ocean of living: a promise, and a hope. Love,hilary

dear hilary: make something beautiful

Dear Hilary,I don't know what to do. I love people with this fierce love. I love their stories, coffee with them, wine with them, crying and laughing with them. I love how terrible they are, and how miraculous. But you can't make a career of that, can you? I don't think it's counseling, exactly. I don't think it's social work or psychology. I don't fit in the traditional higher education boxes. I'm not quite philosophical enough or theological enough to do that kind of work. When you ask me what I'm working on for 10,000 hours, ask me what I want to be an "expert" in - I tell you it's listening. It's watching. It's carving out spaces and times for others. I want to spend 100,000 hours listening. But who does that for a career? No one.Love,Out of the BoxDear Out of the Box,The other day I did something thoughtless. I pushed my way into a conversation where I very, very clearly did not belong. I did it because of a bunch of things that are only half relevant to the situation: jealousy and desire and insecurity and the laundry list we always list for each other and ourselves. And, so very graciously, I was reminded of that.But something miraculous happened when I did that. Something that I have to tell you, Out of the Box, makes me believe that you are in the right place, wherever you are, doing the right thing, whatever it is. The miraculous thing is that I learned something from it.Out of that awkward situation, and the careful grace of the people who reminded and called me to account, I learned something about boundaries. I learned about what my jealousy/desire/insecurity can yield. I saw lived out in front of me the reality of our careless movement in the world being chaos and hurt to others.It shook me up. It worried me. It gave me the knot in my stomach, the one I get when I fear that I am, after all, just a disappointment. But I learned. And this is the kind of miraculous, mysterious, beautiful alchemy that happens when we take what happens to and around us, and we build with it. We expand on the inside. We build bridges. We are opened wider and, as a consequence, we are filled with more. And, as a consequence of that, we pour out more.So. You say this is what you want to do? You say this is your 10,000 or 100,000 or 10 million hours. This listening. This alchemy. This making beautiful the things that happen to people. I say, Love, what are you afraid of? You are in the right place. Because that is a big freaking dream. Because it isn't a dream that you achieve by graduate schools or meetings or promotions or raises. It isn't a dream that has a ladder.You will only begin to realize that dream if you live out everything in front of you so forcefully, so laughingly, so achingly wrong and right and wrong again, that you learn from it. You will live inside this dream only if you expand on the inside. You will live inside this dream only if you make beautiful things of your stories.Spend 10,000 hours listening, yes. But spend it listening to yourself, alongside all those others. Spend it striking out in an attempt to write down these beautiful things and failing miserably. Spend it watching the world and telling us what you see. You have to practice this work inside yourself if you want to pour out for others. You must take that stupid thing you did and accept it inside yourself and listen to it. You must take that situation you refuse to acknowledge is happening and accept it into yourself and love it, and listen to it.To make a life of this (because it's a life you want, not a career), you must be willing to do it for yourself. To offer a candle to others, to share your vision of all that could be, of all that might be, you have to have that kind of vision for yourself. Stop worrying about the ladders and labels, the unknowing, the strikeouts of what you are and are not and what jobs and what cities and what barely-paying-the-rent stories you live. And go make something beautiful of it. When, and only when, you are willing to believe that this very story you are living in is right, because it is yours, because it is bigger than you: then you will live inside that dream. Oh, and how we will be blessed.Love,hilary

dear hilary: the tuning fork

Dear Hilary,I want to please other people. I want to do whatever will make them happy. You want 100 photocopies in 3 minutes? Done. You want a strategic plan for the future of an organization at this college? Done. You want me to be there, run this errand, listen to this problem? I would love to. But then I run headlong into this wall. I really want to be a writer. I really want to be a counselor, of some kind. I really want to put writing and counseling together in some strange beautiful combination, and I don't want to lose threads of theology, or of my love of French, or my love of theater... When I ask people what I should do, they tell me that I would be a great PhD student, of history or political science or philosophy. They tell me I could run an organization, a school even. I want to please them, and I don't want to disappoint anyone's dreams. Help?Love,Afraid to DisappointDear Afraid to Disappoint,Our piano is out of tune at home. The keys clink strange half-tones, and I swear I can hear it groaning when someone asks it to sing one more rendition of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." Have you ever watched someone tune an instrument? They take that strange fork instrument and hit it against something - your knee, or a piece of plastic or wood, the door frame, or something. And then they hold it up to their ear to hear it ringing. The air moves between the two tines of the fork and the note - a middle C, or an A - becomes the foundation for the rest.I have been thinking in these last few months that certain loves in our lives are like a tuning fork. They give us the foundation for the rest, a measure against which we can understand how other things might fit into our lives.Sometimes it's terrifyingly clear that they don't sound the same. I do not love everything in the magnitude that I love writing. I do not breathe, and ache and live in biology; I do not yearn for one more hour with a potter's wheel or a linoleum block printing press. And why should we be afraid of this? We will never be able to do everything, anyway. In the small amount of time we are gifted, why shouldn't our hearts be caught up in the work we love most?I think you ache to write. I think your body physically feels the need to put words on paper. Why else would you write? I think you are beginning to tune the piano of your life by the writing tuning fork. So strike it and listen. Does counseling sound like that? Does teaching? Does directing plays or traveling to France? Does politics, or philosophy, or history?You write to me that you don't want to disappoint others in their ideas of what you should do. I can understand that. You don't want to say no to a career in history or political science or philosophy, partly because you love these professors and mentors. You want to honor their work, affirm the value of their field. That's admirable. But, Afraid to Disappoint, I have to tell you that the only sure disappointment in this life is living less of you. You are the unlikely combination of counseling, writing, French, history, politics, philosophy, and faith. You are the unlikely wedding planner meets chemical engineer. You are the unlike-everything-else musician turned playwright turned nanny turned environmental advocate...Being that, that strange impossible combination, takes everything you've got. It will cost you the security of pleasing others. It will cost you the comfort of a plan. It will cost you a life characterized by steps and guidelines and directions and each thing done right.It will pay you back with a heart that hurts so much sometimes you think that the person just stabbed you. It will give you back failed attempts to plan weddings and failed attempts to get a second interview and failed attempts to move to France. It will give you back uncertainty and breakups at two in the morning when it isn't said but unsaid, and you leave and lie on your bed thinking that for sure you are dead and there is no more and what else could there be, and you'll play country music and read Dear Sugar and throw the book across the room because this life will be so damn mysterious.But isn't that what you really want? To throw books across the room because of the damn mystery of it all, the deep love that roars, the brilliant failure, the moment of singular compassion, the breakup at 2am and the return flight from France and everything it teaches you?Strike the tuning fork. There isn't anything to be afraid of.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: who it's all for

Dear Hilary,Why do you do this? Why do you write? Why do you bother? There are other blogs of all different kinds, people writing just like you, people with years of advice you can't have, because you're so young. Why do you do this?Love,A Skeptical ReaderDear Skeptical Reader,For October 24, my daily book of quotes from Rilke says,"Here is the time for telling. Here is its home.Speak and make known: More and morethe things we could experience are lost to us, banished by our failureto imagine them.Old definitions, which onceset limits to our living,break apart like dried crusts." - From the Ninth Duino ElegyFitting, isn't it? I hoped he would have something amazing to say when I read your question and fear rocketed through me. Because while we usually preach "no one right answer" we always suspect that there might be one better answer, one wiser answer, one answer that will convince you that I am really qualified to do this, to be this, to name myself this. When I ask myself why I write, I want to say it's because I must, because I see better, because I have a gift with words.But that's not really it. Whether those things are true in any degree is irrelevant. I write because I love people. I write because of you, the skeptical reader. I write because more than anything I'd like to be a vessel of living water and so far, this small, unknown corner of the blog is my first big attempt. I am trying to love with my words.We miss things because we fail to imagine them. I am with the poet, that this is the time for the telling. Not someday in the future when my young self is a distant, blurry picture. Not when I think I have the right reasons to write. Not when I am worn in by children or jobs or cross-country moves or fights in the airport. I don't know when those things will happen, and if I wait until they do, if I wait until I think I have lived to write anything, then I will fail to imagine the telling of this story. I will fail to make here the home for my story. Here, and now, a 22 year old with her pockets full of plane tickets and big dreams, without a clue where to begin looking for fullness. Here is the home of that story.I write for the five people who found a post about singleness that I wrote in the deep dark pit of despairing about singleness and felt less alone, even if it was just for a moment. I write for the good girls who fear that grace might not have enough room for them, who believe that love is earned and not poured out, who trust more in their ability to please than the God who already adores. I write to hold their hand across the internet and promise them that the same God they fear won't have grace cherishes and adores them. I write for the girl in the pew ahead of me who looks longingly at the boy across the aisle from her, to catch her as she turns away and promise her that someday we'll sit on a front porch somewhere and the rejection and wonder and hurt will be the building and making of our bigger life.I write for the people in Starbucks who sit side by side comparing the chaos that lives inside them, and wondering if it might ever become calm. I write for those of us who wonder about sex and love, who pace up and down the floorboards of their bedroom anxious over the non-texter, the non-returner-of-the-phone-calls, the non-job-offer or the non-grad-school-application. I write for poets and stragglers, for letter writers and lovers of words, for ramblers in the woods and for the one person who might read this post and in the five minutes it takes them, steady their heartbeat. That's who this is for. That's what this is about.I write to imagine the person I pray I someday become: alive with wild love, holding hands across tables in Starbucks and in a quiet office somewhere, tucking hair behind ears and pouring a second glass of water.I write because here is the home of my story.And because, most of all, always, because I love.Love,hilary

dear hilary: homeward bound

Dear Hilary,I was listening to a Sarah McLachlan song the other day - "World on Fire." Do you know it? Do you know that line, "Hearts break, hearts bend, love still hurts"? I'm wondering about this as it applies to my decision to stay home after graduation. I moved back, back to familiar people and places, back to what feels like an older self. I feel out of place, bent out of shape. And I look at the people who traveled, who journeyed across oceans or continents, who sit in university classes and write theses, who work in labs or in non-profits on K St or who teach for America... and I stayed here. Why does it hurt?Love,Homeward BoundDear Homeward Bound,Isn't it funny how easily envious we are? If we are dating, we are jealous for unattached freedom. If we are single, we pine over red wine for a relationship. When we are in school all we think is, "get me OUT" and when we are at work all we think is, "Remember that awesome paper I got to write about hermeneutics?" (Okay, not everyone says that).And when we return home, to our old rooms, our rickety bookcases, our messy kitchens, all the things we already know, we can think of nothing else but moving away. We plan elaborate apartments furnished by Anthropologie. We imagine long walks through Lincoln Park, along the Seine with fresh bread, in London, in Portugal. We tell ourselves there we'd find the self we're longing to be: fun and outgoing, breezy and yet thoughtful, maybe with a cool but understated piercing to differentiate the new season of our life and almost certainly with a whole new outlook on life.Ironic, love, isn't it, that the people who moved far away feel almost the same way. We imagine getting a Starbucks in the neighborhood we know, high-fiving the barista. We imagine using our native currency/language/music tastes. We imagine walking through the city knowing exactly where the used poetry bookshop is. We imagine ourselves, confident in the familiarity of things, on a long run around the pond that looks impossibly effortless. We're probably wearing the cutest possible running outfit in said effortless run.We are easily jealous of the lives and gifts we don't have. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: these things can always be your becoming. It matters tremendously that you are, as you say, "homeward bound" - part of your becoming gets to be grappling with the older self, the one you think you've left behind. Your becoming doesn't involve a new presentation or a new start in a strange place. Your becoming involves a mud pit wrestling match with the expectations of who you are and what you do. Most of these are your expectations, sweet heart - and it'll be a tough fight. But your becoming involves this tough fight.You've got a lovely, pining letter here. Hearts do break and bend, love does hurt. It will do that next door to you and 10,000 miles away and inside you. You know what that song is really about, though, right?World's on fire, it's more than I can handle, tap into the water, try to bring my share. I try to bring more, more than I can handle, bring it to the table, bring what I am able... Bring more than you can handle. Bring your share. Bring what you are able. The point of singing this isn't to throw a pity party that you're back in your old neighborhood and others are somewhere else. The point of singing this isn't to collapse because sometimes we suck and are beautiful and stupid and other people are so very mysterious and we want things we can't have and we're restless and... and... and...Give to the table in front of you more than you are able. This is nothing less than your great task. You are homeward bound. Bound there, giving your whole heart, I think, you will be amazed at what you become.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: hormones and love

Dear Hilary,First of all, what is the deal with our hormones? I feel like a hostage sometimes in this crazy pattern of attraction and sex drive and then I have other moments where I wonder what on earth is going on. And then I think, what's the right way to do this, anyway? Is there one? A right way to be young and have hormones and be attracted and want others to be attracted back to me, all without going overboard?Love,Hormones + Love?Dear Hormones + Love?,First of all, the deal is that it is actually quite normal to have hormones. We're supposed to have them. They do a bunch of things for us besides signal somewhere deep in our gut that the man or woman across the aisle in the airplane is oh-so-fine. They help our growth, our metabolism (giving us energy), reproduction, the sexual function, our mood... they are powerful chemical messengers, traveling through our bodies (released, I just learned, by major endocrine glands like the thyroid and the pituitary). All of this, aside from making me very, very interested in biology, tells me that your hormones are not alien invaders. They aren't holding you hostage. They're actually a part of you. Maybe it's our culture or our background or our religious beliefs or just our general fear of the body (powerful yet feeble thing that it is), but we must get past the idea that our bodies desiring other bodies is a strange plot twist. They're designed that way, love. We experience powerful attraction to that oh-so-fine man/woman in seat 12E because we are sexual beings. We experience it instinctively. I think it might be that simple.Like all feelings, realizing that you are wondering about sex and your sex drive and if you should or can or will or might someday want to have it is kind of terrifying. Some of this is fun - I look really hot in this dress! - and some of it is fearful - What if they don't think so, or do I really want that to be what they are thinking about when we have a conversation about politics? - and all of it is new.You don't have to have answers. You don't even have to write a letter to me asking for them. I think my advice in your situation, at the beginning of grappling with these questions is to begin to pay attention. Listen to yourself. What do you respond to? What worries you? Where do you feel a disconnect? Pay attention to your answers. Pay attention to how you understand your body, your sexuality, your heart and your mind. You are you, made up of all these things and more, and you stand closest to it all.You ask me for a right way to do this, a right way to enjoy being young and yet not go overboard. I don't know that there is any way to begin to know "the right way" except by listening. Really listen, though. Your letter tells me that you want more than just a quick answer. You don't want to be told that it's okay to make out, but not get undressed, or that you can kiss someone who you aren't dating, but not more. You don't want the highlighted rules, do you?You want a framework. You want a way to make these decisions so that they echo you: authentic, beautiful, young, nervous you. Lists of rules aren't helpful, in the end, because they don't bring a bigger picture with them. They don't help you see the purpose behind the decisions you make.Give yourself some space to listen. Be brave and go first and ask your close friends about how they might answer the question - and listen to them. Begin to ask yourself, "What do these feelings mean? How do I want to express attraction? What do I want to do with my feelings? How do I want to live fully and well?"That's the best place I know to begin in almost everything in life. Including us and all those wonderful crazy hormones.Love,hilary

dear hilary: anonymous love

Dear Hilary,I'm ambitious. I have plans in my head for my life, plans for travel and degrees and books published. I kind of want to be famous. But I wonder if it's really that worth it? What do you think?Love,CelebrityDear Celebrity,I think the best answer to your question is to ask myself what I think I'm here for. I was pondering your question drinking a caffeine free Diet Coke watching the newest episode of Castle. I was thinking about it as I smeared avocado clay mask on my face in a vain attempt to do something productive to my pores. It even crossed my mind as I reread old letters from dear friends. Do I want to be famous? Is it worth it? What do I think about that? I thought it over and over. And this is what I came up with.I am not here to be famous.Famous is a cheap kind of knowing. Every one of us can do better than a name on a billboard when it comes to being known. Every last one of us is already loved more intimately than that. I'd rather run up the stairs to my best friend's room soaking wet from the rain and stand in front of her, dripping wet with disappointment and regret and anger and naked, raw, rain-soaked life than ever publish a Pulitzer.I am not here to be famous.Imagine this, Celebrity: you could do an act of radical, unbelievable, earth-shattering love and never get credit for it. Or you could do a smaller act, of love and warmth, sure, but smaller, and become really famous. I urge you to always pick the earth-shattering love option. It's there. When you calculate graduate schools and Sunday school volunteering and living at home and becoming a top notch politician. The option for earth-shattering love is always present. Sometimes that will shove you sideways into fame. Sometimes it will put you up on a stage to accept a prize or a prestigious job or a movie contract. Sometimes it will mean you become "famous" whether you wanted it or not. But we are here to do the brave thing whether it brings fame or a $1.99 hallmark card. We aren't here to climb ladders but to leap off cliffs into trust and grace without any promise of ever getting any kind of credit for it.We are not here to be famous.A wise man once told me, "Imagine, Hilary, what amazing things we could do if we didn't care who got the credit." This man, he lives it out. He works harder than almost anyone I've met, dreams and imagines constantly, builds programs and mentors students. This man doesn't care if anyone ever knows that it was his idea. He doesn't care if he gets paid less than everyone else. He doesn't care if he looks ridiculous or could have been promoted at a different institution or might have had this illustrious career in...When I get all knotted up in ambition I think about him. I think about standing rain-soaked in my best friend's bedroom. I think about buying a cup of coffee for a homeless man in DC who doesn't know me. I think about all the words I write that get me no closer to being a celebrity, but one person reads them and feels loved, and that breaks my heart right open.I'm here, you're here, we're all here to give more than we take. To live towards the light. To hold out our hands to empty ones. To stand rain-soaked in bedrooms and believe in the beautiful and the good.We are called to bigger things than ambition can offer us. We are called to anonymous, wild, love.Love,hilary

dear hilary: you aren't alone

Dear Hilary,Help. Why am I here? I think I'm having a panic attack over what I have done, and haven't done, and the thing I promised God and the thing I promised myself and all of it is slipping away in the hard and new and I feel alone. Am I? Is anyone listening?Love,The-Silence-Is-DeafeningDear Silence,No.No, sweetheart. You aren't alone. Do you hear me? You aren't alone. You and all the thousands of other new college graduates who whisper these worries to their best friend on the phone late at night. You and all the many new employees in their new jobs counting the splotches on their ceilings as they worry about the morning. You and all the promisers, the rooted, the winged, the ones who got on airplanes and the ones who waved through glass tunnels as those airplanes left. You aren't alone.It feels that way because we live in a culture so afraid of silence we'll offer almost anything to avoid it. We make this funny link between solitude and loneliness, between the absence of crowds of people and being unwanted, unloved or unlovely. Don't make that mistake, dear one. Solitude is a gift, just like community. You don't have to feel lonely when you're alone. I don't blame you, love. I walked to my car just this past week, one late night after work, holding my breath to keep from wailing that the parking lot was empty, I was empty, my office was empty, my bed was empty, everything, everything was empty and alone.But the thing about living with wild gifts is that we don't get to choose their arrival or departure. We don't get to choose if wild gifts remain or not; if or when they come to us, if or when they go. You have a wild gift of solitude now. You might not have it forever. You might only have it for now. But I bet you're writing to me because you'd rather give it back, right? You want to trade it for the gift she got, the calling he has, the job or the friend group or the curly hair or the...And this is the same problem laced through a different story: we don't get to choose wild gifts. We only get to receive them. You don't have to spend yourself on loneliness because you've been given a gift of solitude. You don't have to be anxious or sad that you weren't given the gift of young marriage or young children or a PhD program or a cross-country move.I think that all those young college graduates, young professionals, the promisers, the rooted and winged, all of us waste time wishing we could trade lives with each other like lunchboxes. We all wish for a different wild gift. We all wish we had the kind of hard but beautiful someone else is living.John Watson wrote, "Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle." And he is right. I will say it a different way: Give love, for everyone is living a wild gift. Including you and your solitude.You are here because this life is your wild gift. You aren't alone. See? We are all right here, holding our gifts and lives out in front of each other.We need you to hold yours, too.Love,hilary

my own path (a guest post by fiona)

Oh, I'm so, so, SO excited to share Fiona's words with you today. She's one of the many talented writers out there that I enjoyed from afar for a while before braving the first email. Since then, it's been even more wonderful to get to know her a little bit. Today, she writes over here rich, beautiful words about the paths that stretch out before us.  You are my competition.I stood beside you, on that starting line and we started racinglimbs still chubby with baby fat, pigtails flying you with the prettiest hair clips and the enviable my little pony collectionyou with the neatest handwriting and the most gold starsyou with all the words and the right dance moves to the newest pop song. We run and run and I push every ounce of energy into theseyoung legs just to keep up with you the one who the boys want to hang around near, jostling for attentionyou with the perfect style perfectly poised between trendy and quirkyyou with the easy straight A’s, the assurance of an Oxbridge offer. We run on, my heart beating fast now, breath coming shorterharder, but I must keep pace with you the one dating the CU president and whispers of a ringyou the tutor’s favourite, the job offers already arrivingyou with the perfect smile in church and the easy way of praying out loud. We run and we run and we run until the sweatdrips into my eyes and my chest feels likeit will explodebut I must keep up, must keep pace, must prove I can do it until The path divides and I stumble to a stopin confusion. There you run ahead on my left, a new partner to run with, baby in the sling.And there you go on my right, career reaching new heights, another promotion on the horizon.And you, heading further away, with your church speaking schedule and the book contract signed. My chest heaves with the weight of exertion and competitiona tightness creeping with the promise of tearsmy breath comes fast and shallow.Which of you am I supposed to keep up with?How can I keep pace with you all?How am I supposed to know which path to take? And then a voiceunruffled and unworriedA word spoken over my shoulderin my ear This is the way, this is your wayWalk this wayRun this pathYou will run and not grow wearyyou will walk and not be faint. I lift my tired head and see a path stretchingforward from my worn out feetan empty path, my own pathno one to jostle with compete with keep up withthis is not a racetrack, nothis is a run to enjoyevery step ofthe way. And so I take that first step. A little bit about Fiona: I'm a British woman living in Luxembourg with my Danish husband. I love celebrating, gathering people together, seeing the new friendships and plans that emerge. I love seeing people find their role in God’s big story and I'm still trying to find mine. My one word for the year is “brave,” because I don’t want to let fear be the reason I miss out on all God has for me. I blog at fionalynne.com/blog and tweet at @fiona_lynne.

the wild gifts

It's late on a Saturday night. Our bare toes trace the wood, listening to the tide come in. She puts her hand on my knee. "Do you remember what you said before? That people are wild gifts?"I nod, my hands linking and unlinking, making knots of each other in my lap. If you spend time with me, you'll soon discover that my hands reveal almost as much about my heart as my eyes do, these small windows our bodies offer inside ourselves. I can't help it - the harder I try to hide, bury myself inside sweaters and stiff posture, the more my heart flashes across my face, my hands, my eyes. Our bodies carry messages for us, and tonight, mine whispers, "Yeah, I remember. What about it?""Hil. It isn't that you couldn't. It isn't that you're less, not enough, none of that." I nod, still squirming. "It's just that I know you. And I know that you care. That heart of yours cares even when you don't notice it. But you don't get to keep a wild gift forever."I put my hand on top of her hand. "I know. I know, I do that." She smiles, and through the dark I can see her eyes twinkling back the porch lights. I sigh, put my head on her shoulder. "I just so wanted to give that kind of care and attention. Is that wrong?"She settles into our shared posture, sighing herself. "No, love. It's not wrong. But you said yourself, it isn't what the story holds." She lets those words hang there, between the laughter next door and the cello humming in the house. We sit like that, silent, our eyes on the ocean.People are gifts. Oh, they are difficult gifts. They come with no instructions, all fragile and beautiful and broken. They come alive with questions and possibilities. People change their minds, send a thousand messages, tug at our roots and stretch us.But I hear it again: People are gifts. I sometimes want to hold onto these wonderful, wild gifts. We want to keep things just as they are. We want to write the story so that they always stay just as they are, just as we are, just as it is. I know how to welcome them, but I don't know how to give them back.But if people are gifts, if they arrive in our lives in unexpected ways, and transform us, if they bring us right to the edge of who we are, if they leave us and burn bridges and make promises and seek us... if they are gifts, we must not pretend they belong to us. We must not act as though we know best what they need, who they are, where they should go and what they should do. We must not try to write their stories according to what we wish they'd do.For people are wild gifts from a God with wildly good purposes.And the story belongs to Him.Love,hilary

dear hilary: when it isn't okay, it still is

Dear Hilary,My question is silly, maybe, but real. I read you and I'm wondering, where does wisdom come from?Love,just curiousDear just curious,To answer your lovely question:From God. From the woods after a long day. From aching with laughter and with pain in the same night. From a brother who asked me to bake with him last night and whose sweet smile brought me out of myself. From the moment when you say, "Jesus?" in the trembling voice and He says, "Yes."From getting on your knees in the dirt.From the millionth mistake in the same direction.From everything you learn you cannot do.From being forgiven.From sitting on your bed reading Rilke and then curling up and crying silently because you want to be that wise and you know you aren't, you want to accept sadness and you keep trying to force it out, you want to begin and be vast and write poetry and love earnestly and all of the rest... but you're small and still and you spilled carpet glue on yourself and you can't seem to make heads or tails of this new brave world.From trusting people when they say they love you.From waiting.From unrequited love.From writing letters to yourself on Wednesdays and more from the wiser people who whisper to you that it's okay not to know the answer.Where does wisdom come from, sweetheart? From a heart overwhelmed with love for the One who makes all things new. From asking Him hard questions. From waiting for Him - more than watchmen for the morning. Love,Hilary

dear hilary: the four months later reminder

Dear Hilary,Do you have any advice for how to keep myself from panicking every time I make a mistake? The kind of panic that sets my heart racing. The kind that makes me want to throw up. How do you bear a mistake?Love,PerfectionistDear Perfectionist,At a job I had a few years ago, I got an email. It was from my boss, ad it asked me to explain a complaint he had received about something I had done. I read his email while eating a granola bar and plotting my next strategic move to get the guy in microeconomics to ask me out. You can imagine, then, when I read that email.I fell apart. I cried hysterically. I wrote back to my boss apologizing profusely, trying at once to justify myself and take all the responsibility. I cried through a class that afternoon. I cried in bed that night. I was utterly convinced that this was the end. I had ended my job. I had ended the office. I had ended everything.Love, I am here. I am typing into an iPhone screen from Colorado. I am alive, the office is okay. That mistake did not signal the end of all things. It didn't have that kind of power.Our mistakes rarely do. You panic from responsibility, from fear, from imagining the possible outcomes. I think it is wiser to remember that love conquers fear (even in our jobs). Remember that this mistake is yours, too, to own as part of learning and growing. Even what we do wrong is put to good use in a different kind of economy.Four months after that email, and I was fine. You should laugh, sweet pea. You wrote to me looking for what to do. But really, you're not going to need to do much other than wait. Own this as part of how we learn. Own it as you walk around the quad worrying about what went wrong. Own it with all your might, that it will teach you good things and brave things and beautiful things.And four months and then four years from now, it will be part of a story you tell to encourage someone else. It will be so part of you that you do not bear it: you love it.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: the twitter failure

Psst. I know I'm 22, and a new 22 at that - but if you ever had a question, or wanted to ponder something out loud with me in this space? Shoot me an email at hilary.sherratt@gmail.com. I would love to wonder about things with you (and I'm always looking for new questions). Dear Hilary,I don't want to write this letter to you. Writing this letter means admitting that I don't know how to do something. I am a blogger. Kind of. I am in love with writing. But I'm not being very disciplined about it. I started blogging a while ago, and then I wanted people to read my writing, and "follow" me, and I started (trying) to use Twitter, but I just... I don't know how to put my question into words - it is about discipline, and writing, and blogging, and how to do it. I don't want to fall off the horse. But I don't know how to make this writing go.Love,Twitter FailureDear Twitter Failure,140 characters. That's all you get in Twitter-land. 140 characters to share a story, a link, to ask someone a pithy question or jab at someone else with a witty turn of phrase. 140 characters and that INCLUDES spaces. I don't know who these Twitter-gurus are. Maybe they live on a mountain somewhere, coming up with ways to shorten jokes and make links zippier and find the oh-so-important tag line that will make people more likely to click over. There are Twitter parties, Tweet-ups and meet-ups and iPhone apps and Instagram. It's enough to make our heads spin and our fingers quake.It's enough to make anyone dipping at the beginning of things feel like a "twitter failure."But did you ever pause to think you didn't set OUT to be a twitter winner? You didn't start your blog because you wanted to tweet about it - you tweeted about your writing because you believed that people should read it. Because there are aching beautiful things inside you and you wanted to share them with the world. You try through twitter. You try through blogging. You try through coffee dates and prayers and shouting matches and letters written on old notebook paper.The heart of your complaint isn't about Twitter anyway, is it? It's about laziness and discipline and this work of writing.There are only two questions to ask you. Two questions, and the rest is simple:1. must you write?2. if you must, will you put your ass on the floor and write?If the answer is yes to one, then I hope your answer is also yes to two. I hope if you dig inside yourself, like Rilke tells us to in "Letters to a Young Poet" and you discover that you must write. That it sings like a bird aching to be uncaged, that it is the thing you can't help doing... then please, say yes to question two. Put your ass on the floor, as Dear Sugar says, and write. Pick a number of posts and promise your blog and your heart that you will write them. Pick the ways you share those with others - maybe twitter, maybe not... maybe you need to just write them for a while and not worry about whether anyone is reading them. But if you believe this is work you should do, then you must do it.The savvy use of Twitter will be irrelevant.Love,hilary

dear hilary: your twenty two year old self

Dear Hilary,You turn 22 today. Happy birthday, sweet pea. It's an exciting moment in your story. Another year, another step in the midst of your real, wild, precious life. This time last year you wrote a letter to yourself to try and teach yourself lessons for the future. You wanted to learn how to be patient, how to laugh, how to remember the moon rising over the Atlantic or the feeling of your muscles carrying you home.And here we are, a year later. How we grow is not best measured in years. It's a tangled, unlikely journey. You've grown much more and much less than you think. You won't really know what the last year was until you're telling someone years from now, when "Stubborn Love" by The Lumineers plays on the radio and you smile.But the very first Dear Sugar column you read (funny, isn't it? That wasn't very long ago) was from a 22 year old. It was called "Tiny Beautiful Things" and it changed your life. And now a book by the same name is on its way to you. Dear Sugar's letter was asking for advice. What would you tell yourself at 22? It seemed like the right moment, now, to write that letter.Give more than you have. When someone asks you to take a walk with them and they hold their heart out, trembling and raw, to you, take it gently. Sometimes you must give it back to them. Sometimes you must hold it in your hands and not let go. Not even when you don't know what to do and you are screaming in your head that you are only 22 and you don't know anything! Not knowing and still holding on is the gift.You are not your college transcript. You are not the silver bowls gathering dust next to your brother's Star Wars battleships - not the awards, not the opportunities, not even the ones you are most proud of. Laugh, Hilary. How could those things be the sum of who you are? You are alive and growing. There aren't boxes or categories to contain you. If your heart feels left behind, remember that love is never wasted, only given a new purpose. Remember that disappointed hopes are still beautiful. Remember that most of the work you were meant to do was in the hoping, not the coming true. Don't work too much. There is enough time. Not everything you touch is urgent.You are most wise when you admit you have no earthly idea what the hell you're going to do. You are closest to the truth when you lie in your bed sweating on a July night and whisper to Jesus that He'll have to fix it, because you can't.You aren't really very old, sweetheart. So dance to "Hello" and for goodness' sake, will you please stop worrying about how you look? It's the time you forgot your makeup and didn't care that you were the most radiant. It's the joy you have in your body and your heart that's beautiful.Call even if they don't call you back. Write letters. Do not waste your time on less than real love. Sugar's right: it moves freely in both directions. Set yourself free from trying to earn it. Give it to others as much as you possibly can, and then more.Be brave enough to be empty. Be braver than you think you need to be. And yes, you'll keep learning this over and over. Desire and heartache and confusion and courage can't be mastered in a day. Or a year. You will relearn everything a hundred times.It's a gorgeous world and a broken one. But it is your one wild life, love. Spend your heart in it. Love,hilary

dear hilary: the facebook wedding flood

Dear Hilary,Last year, sometime in July, you wrote about being single. You posted about being single in this quiet way, about that, "no, never" answer. And I remember reading it and wondering how you found peace with being single. Because I'm sitting here, in the middle of all these weddings and engagements and invitations and plans, gifts and registries. People my age are putting on white dresses that belong to them, not their mothers, and walking down a real aisle, not just the narrow hallway between their kitchen and their living room. It's not dress-up anymore, Hilary - it's happening. But it's not happening to me. And I look at it all, and I'm jealous and insecure and I don't know how to resist the comparisons - like what if that never happens to me. Can you help?Love, Compulsively-Clicking-Through-Wedding-AlbumsDear CCTWA,I don't want to be harsh with you, sweet pea - let me say that first and foremost. In the land of wild love, I don't want to offer harsh, bitter, it's-hard-so-suck-it-up advice. I want you to hear me when I tell you (and whoever happens to click through the links that lead them to this post): it is okay to sit down for a while in the middle of the road and feel what you feel. To stop in your week and say out loud as you drive home that YOU ARE NOT OKAY WITH ALL OF THIS, AND IT REALLY SUCKS, AND JUST IN CASE THE WORLD NEEDED TO KNOW, YOU DO NOT LIKE IT.Those feelings pestering you now will grow fiercer if you stifle them. You don't need to pretend that you've never been anything but overjoyed that you are single for all these years, and you really want nothing more than to click through gift registries and buy newlyweds sets of Ralph Lauren sheets and matching His n' Hers toothbrush holders (people do register for funny things sometimes - all those strangely shaped salt and pepper shakers, for one). You don't have to pretend to yourself that only one type of feeling is permissible. In the land of wild love, we feel what we feel. Always. It may be selfish, it may be silly, it may be blown out of proportion, but it is alive and real and denying it will not help.But in the same breath that you push your sunglasses up on your head and stamp your feet and spread your hands out in exasperation? You must laugh with yourself. This, like so many other feelings of frustration and anxiety? They can be calmed by a bit of laughter. Look at it this way: you, beautiful, complicated, intense, melodramatic, creative... you are stamping your feet at the world while all it asks you to do is trust. That is difficult work, trust. But it is even more work to worry, more work to be jealous, more work to look through all those albums with a rising tide of insecurity in your stomach.So sweet pea, feel what you feel. Then take those feelings and hold them in your hands. Aren't they just a little bit lighter than you thought? Hold all that is difficult and frustrating about being single in the facebook wedding flood up against the light of your young and wild life.There is no trick to being at peace with being single. None at all. I didn't take a magic potion when I wrote that blog post, and if you read more posts tagged, "dating" over there, you can tell that 99% of the time, I am stamping my feet about this very thing. Actually, I think I stamped my feet about it yesterday... But love, it isn't a question of finding the magic fix. It's a question of your willingness to laugh with yourself. It's a question of not letting all of this weigh too much. It's a question of buying those strangely shaped salt and pepper shakers and resisting the urge to click through facebook albums...There is a facebook wedding flood in all of our lives - a flood of people having what we think we deserve, what we want for ourselves. When the flood hits, put on your galoshes and your rainhat, and laugh.Love,Hilary 

dear hilary: can we have it all?

Dear Hilary,Last week there was this article that everyone went wild over. It was retweeted and linked and talked about over Facebook. It lingered in conversations in coffee shops. I overheard people in lunch lines and laundromats asking: can women have it all?Well, Hilary? Can we?Love,WorkingDear Working,I read that article while eating homemade macaroni and cheese out of a handmade bowl at my high school. I read and pondered - what did I think about family and home and work and ambition and love and sex. But the list kept getting longer, each aspect of life added in a tangled mess. I tried to draw out the pieces of the life I dream of, and my napkin was so covered in scribbles and lines that I threw it away in frustration.You see, working, I don't think that we're asking each other the right question. We are so worried about "having" it all that we forgot that we don't "have" any of our relationships or our work or our dreams. They are always bigger than us. They involve other hearts and minds. They take effort and acceptance.We ask "can we have it all?" but I almost want you to ask instead, "what kind of beautiful and good life do I envision?" and then chase it with the full realization that the dream is too big to achieve and that grace is the game changer.I want to tell you, sweet pea, that women can have it all. I so much want us to have the space to have careers and families and road trips and wine tastings and books and surprise parties. I want us in politics and law and dentistry and poetry. To make that dream happen I think we have to change the rules of the game. I think we need a new idea of what it looks like for anyone to raise children and advance their career and tend to their gardens and worship and rest. We will need to make our words about "having it all" mean something new for everyone, not just women climbing career ladders or staying at home or sitting in their laundromats worried sick that they can't fall in love because then how will they go to grad school?But I want more from us, too. I want humility as we pursue this. If life is gift, if it is grace and luck and mystery, if it is about becoming the strange beautiful self you are created to become? We have to give up the idea that we can demand a particular package. We have to give up the idea that one "having it all" fits any of us, any of our lives as they are lived in the mess and glory.This life is not a possession. It is a gift. Women and men cannot have it, own it, or make it fit into the box we designed at the beginning of our journeys.We can only keep pushing forward in the direction of real life. We can push towards what is true and just, and we can obey the wild and surprising callings that come our way: callings of work and mothering and being married or being single and being a friend and worshipping and thinking. We can obey those callings and laugh- because it is bigger than us, this work we do, and we are only at the beginning.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: some days it is only you

dear hilary,

before i graduated from college, i knew i needed to prepare myself for loneliness. i saw it coming amidst the goodbyes and graduation pictures and hours of packing my things acquired over four years of dorm life. but now it's here, this loneliness, and i think it's here to stay for awhile. so i'm wondering what is the purpose of loneliness? are we meant to experience it and learn from it -- or try desperately to avoid it?

sincerely,

reluctantly lonely

Dear reluctantly lonely,

When I left my semester in Washington, DC and packed up my small, cramped room that I had shared with two roommates, and fretted over whether to mail things home by UPS or USPS, I pretended to everyone that I would not be lonely. That we would not be lonely. I promised Skype dates and March break visits and a heart full of memories. I denied everything about loneliness.

But not long after I left on my early bus to my hometown, lonely caught up to me. I sobbed hysterically through the plane ride. I cried for those hearts now at home in my heart. I cried for those who really left. I cried for no reason and for every reason and the truth is that I could not help but cry. No one can- because loneliness is about love. Because longing for someone or something and being lonely is a part of love.We don't talk about it. Instead we make those wild promises and worry ourselves sick with how we will manage everything and keep it all just as it was. Perhaps we should embrace lonely as a part of love. We tie ourselves in knots around the gut wrenching reality that people do leave. Departure, and arrival. We cannot control our way around them: and pretending we aren't missing those who have left is like pretending that you only "sort of" love the book that changed your life or that you just "kind of" want your deepest dream to come true. Don't pretend not to be lonely, sweetheart. Let the lonely be a new shape of love.Sometimes it is only you. Sometimes it is just you and the songs on the playlist and the questions. Sometimes it is you doing the hard daily work of building your life. Sometimes you will go home and sit in the stillness and wonder- how long will I feel lonely? and there won't be anything to do but wait and trust.I promise, love, that those days which are only you, those days of lonely? They expand your heart most. And that is the real hope.Love,Hilary

dear hilary: miscellaneous treasures

(I gotta tell you, I'm not really an advice columnist. But I started this tradition over in my old space, where I wrote letters to myself, looking for the wiser part of me. But as we journey together, if you have a question? Email me [hilary.sherratt@gmail.com]. I'd love to fumble through towards wisdom with you.)Dear Hilary,I'm 21. I have been reading a lot of advice for college grads: here, and here, and here. I've read beautiful speeches and cried a bit at them. And then I wanted to know - what would you write in a speech like that? What advice would go on your list?Love, Reading Too Much?Dear Reading too much,I'd almost rather ask you to turn the question on yourself today, love. We go looking for advice often when it's our own voices we need to hear. You read these speeches and letters to graduates, advice columns, but really in all of them you're looking for something that resonates as true. I don't know if my list will resonate with you, and I'd encourage you to make your own list, and throw away all the advice you've scribbled down on post-it notes from other people until you're ready to listen to your own heart.But, still. The list.1. Never forget how to handwrite a letter.2. Real love, you will discover as you walk forward, is mostly about keeping your heart open, letting the open sea and time and long runs in the woods heal and restore you when you're hurt, and then holding it out again to the world. Real love bends us. It should.3. The mornings burrowing under sheets and sharing your heart with your roommate are treasures.4. So are the dance parties. And the family dinners. And the walks where you only took right turns.5. Grace does not look like being a doormat. I know you think it does because it's always been that way. You like that habit, it feels safe. But sometimes you have to tell the harder truth. And sometimes, you have to go.6. Do not, do not, believe that lie you want to believe about what makes you beautiful. You're beautiful because you are. It's connected to being, not appearing. It's connected to standing inside your own skin, not that blue dress in your closet.7. Keep watch over the world. Keep watch over your heart. But don't overthink. This is contradictory, somehow, and yet it can be done. I think you'll learn how to do this, this watchful, loving protection that also waits for things to unfold.8. Rambling Man. Poison and Wine. Holocene. More than Life. The Pearl. We Don't Eat. Listen, and repeat.9. East of Eden. Letters to a Young Poet. Dear Sugar. The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In the Time of the Butterflies. Read, and repeat.10. Live with a wild love.Love, Hilary