And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?

And I also know that pain can seem like an endless ribbon. You pull it and you pull it. You keep gathering it toward you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just more pain. But there's always something else at the end; something at least a little different. You never know what that thing will be, but it's there.

You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you’d given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn’t know the outcome for a long time.

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

Even if you yourself were unhappy and anxious, whenever you glimpsed happiness in your child, you suddenly became happy too.

This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it.

We are all here, on this earth for only one go around. And everyone thinks their purpose is to just find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is to find what other people need.