Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

I was receiving counsel today from my best friend. After a few email exchanges she sent me a link to an Oprah article by Liz Glibert (I loved Eat Love Pray- who didn't, but since then Liz has not been my favorite person- I thought in selling the rights to her book she negated any shred of respect I had for her experience).

This article was essentially, what can you really know for sure, everything keeps changing. This idea pretty much encapsulates my life right now, or at least the future of my life right now. I'm headed for France, but where, and maybe not, what if, but then, how will that work, can I really do that etc...

So there was a link after Liz's article for Oprah's top 20 things she knows. I relished in the concreteness of things she knew. Whew, in my current state of instability, it felt good to have a list, it felt good to read something I could hold on to.

I've been getting advice and counsel from everyone, people I haven't heard from or talked to in years, I've shared my troubles with. I'm thankful for their support and guidance. No one has said don't go to France. The general consensus has been looks like you need to leap. But then, that's easy to say when it's not your life.

Oprah's nice concrete list felt like getting into a warm bed, safe and secure. I have an equation to figure out and I need to solve for variables y and z to find x, and x is not an absolute number. Yikes. But thank god for Oprah's list!

So number 8 hit a homer for me: The happiness you feel is in direct proportion to the love you give.

Because immediately I thought Sylvain. I could recognize this love=happiness equation because I'd seen it before with my students. Walking into a classroom I never got "Hello Ms K" I got hugs, from each student under the age of 8. It was like a receiving line at the White House. I know my friends and family have noticed that this year, has been really stressful, and I've done a lot of worrying, but I know what stands out isn't the worrying I've done, because I've always done that. What they notice is that I'm a lot happier than they've often seen me.

P.S. #5. Worrying is wasted time. Use the same energy for doing something about whatever worries you.

P.P.S. Oprah- if I knew how to get a Visa for France without marriage, I'd be happy to expend my energy making that happen, if I knew how to make the US attractive to my boyfriend, I'd do that too.