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The Things We Carry

A close friend told me once that no matter how good we are at our jobs, when we’re finished we’re like a hand taken out of a bucket of water. The water closes in and it’s like we were never there. The other day I gave my students an essay by a RIDICULOUSLY successful author and many had NEVER heard of him. I mean, he was on the cover of TIME magazine a few years ago and has had two of his books made into movies. Come on, people. But . . .Hand out of the bucket. Replaced by water.


And yet . . . I’m stupid enough to think what people do with their lives does matter. Just not because it will get you on cover of TIME. We matter in our personal relationships. We matter when we are the right person at the right time . Or we matter when we create or give something to someone when they need it. When I wrote THIEF I knew it was a risk. It’s book about finding happiness, which is way less sexy than say … Incestuous dragons exploding on Mars (my next book:)). I mostly wrote THIEF to be a good read, for entertainment. But I also wrote it because the bucket I’ve had my hand in for the last five years has a lot to do with finding happiness. And what I’ve learned while soaking my hand is that we all matter. We all have the right to be happy and ability to share that happiness. What we do matters. But maybe not always the way we think. Our hand may be gone, but the water we carried . . . that’s gonna grow something amazing.

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