Status Updates From What Now?

There’s a time in our lives when we all crave the answers. But there is another time, a better time, when we see our lives as a series of choices and What now represents our excitement and our future, the very vitality of life. It’s up to u to choose a life that will keep expanding. It takes discipline to remain curious; it takes work to be open to the world—but oh my friends what noble and glorious work it is

“What now is not just a panic-stricken question tossed out into a dark unknown. What now can also be our joy. It is a declaration of possibility, of promise, of chance. It acknowledges that our future is open, that at every point in our development we are still striving to grow.”

“As I scrubbed the soup pots and margarita pitchers, I figured out that What now is always going to be a work in progress. What now was never what you think it’s going to be, and that’s what every writer has to learn.”

“As quickly as you think that everything is set, it all becomes unglued again…Even if you have it all together you can’t know where you’re going to end up. There are too many forces, as deep and invisible as tides, that keep us bouncing into places where we never thought we’d wind up. Sometimes the best we can hope for is to be graceful and brave in the face of all of the changes that will surely come”

Nothing at all is very much out of fashion these days, as are stillness, silence, and studied consideration. Studied consideration is hard to come by with those little iPod buds stuffed in your ears and the cell phone competing with the Internet. Perhaps we avoid the quiet because we’re afraid that the answer to What now?

wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. U have to be willing to gather them constantly from sources u never imagined to be probable. No 1 chip gives u the answer for everything. No 1 chip stays in the same place throughout ur entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices and ideas, moving things around as u put together ur life. If ur lucky, putting together ur life is a process that will last through every day

“It was for me the start of a lesson that I never stop having to learn: to pay attention to the things I’ll probably never need to know, to listen carefully to the people who look as if they have nothing to teach me, to see school as something that goes on everywhere, all the time, not just in libraries but in parking lots, in airports, in trees”

A fun read to provide a little insight on the life of Ann Patchett.