I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way.I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near dear friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to recognize and cherish and preserve the things and people in my life that I have kept coming back to no matter how far I have gone. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.And my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around dear friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”

Sometimes you walk past a pretty girl on the street and there’s something beyond beauty in her face, something warm and smart and sensual and inviting, and in the three seconds you have to look at her, you actually fall in love, and in those moments, you can actually know the taste of her kiss, the feel of her skin against yours, the sound of her laugh, how she’ll look at you and make you whole. And then she’s gone, and in the five seconds afterwards, you mourn her loss with more sadness than you’ll ever admit to, Brooke has one of those faces, but this time I didn’t pass by and mourn her, this time I stopped and we actually found something, and now I’m going to lose her anyway.

I’m not expecting anything too dramatic. There will be no impassioned speeches, no falling into arms, no holding up of boom boxes in the rain outside her window, no long, seminal kisses in the hallway while the gathered students cheer. But maybe seeing me will remind her that there was something nice about what we were just starting to have, something easy and real, and seeing her will fill me with the fortitude to try to see her again. Maybe we’ll exchange a look, or a laugh, something that will cause the ground beneath us to shift just enough to make me feel okay about leaving her a message the next time I go to the movies alone. And maybe something in my eyes, or in my voice, will let her know that it would be okay for her to come, that I’m a better bet now than I was then. At this point in my life, I’m not looking for any happy endings. I’m just looking to get things started.

Irina searched his face. “Why are you so nice to me?”
“You were nice to me for almost ten years, he said gruffly. “Why should that count for nothing just because it’s not going to be eleven?

The great moments of your life won’t necessarily be the things you do. They’ll also be the things that happen to you. Now I’m not saying you can’t take action to affect the outcome of your life—you have to take action. And you will. But never forget that on any day, you can step out the front door and your whole life can change forever. You see, the universe has a plan, kids. And that plan is always in motion. A butterfly flaps its wings and it starts to rain. It’s a scary thought, but it’s also kind of wonderful. All these little parts of the machine, constantly working, making sure that you end up exactly where you’re supposed to be, exactly when you’re supposed to be there: the right place at the right time.

6. Avoid asking if someone needs help in a kitchen or at a party, just start helping.

4. Wait until all the women have gotten on or off an elevator before you get on or off.

Look, I’m not some chivalry nut or anything, but this small act of politeness is very visual and memorable.

I WILL HATE AND RE-LIKE PEOPLE FOR YOU.

But you can’t get mad if I can’t keep track. Robby? Don’t we hate him? No, we love him. Okay, okay. Sorry.

I WILL TRY TO LIKE YOUR BOYFRIEND FIVE TIMES

This is a fair number of times to hang out with your boyfriend and withhold judgement.

I love romantic comedies. I feel almost sheepish writing that, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years or so that admitting you like these movies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity. But that has not stopped me from watching them…

I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world. Then I lap it up. There is no difference between Ripley from Alien and any Katherine Heigl character. They’re all participating in the same level of made-up awesomeness, and I enjoy every second of it.