In her writing, Anne Lamott has a wry and gentle way of pointing me in a good direction. She doesn’t want to be the object of attention, although she garners radical amounts of positivity when she posts. Rather, she is like a signpost that says “try going over there instead.” In her first TED talk, she identifies 12 things she knows to be true, as informed by her 60-plus years on earth (which she celebrates, she says, because she’s glad to know longer be in the death throes of late-middle-age). Here are the truths that mean the most to me:

1. Insisting on helping people all the time is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Stop getting your helpfulness and goodness all over everybody.

 

2. Nothing outside of you will fix you. It’s an inside job. (Her parenthetic exception: unless you’re waiting for an organ.)

 

3. Food: try to do a little better. “I think you know what I mean.”

 

4. Almost everything will work again if you unplug it in a few minutes, including yourself.

 

5. Quoting Ram Dass: When all is said and done, we’re really just all walking each other home.

 

6. Earth is one big forgiveness school. (My parenthetic truth: I’m pretty sure I’m not a star student.)

 

7. Grace bats last. I read this in an essay and I don’t know what this means. Even so, I hope it’s true.