"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”
This quote is Strayed's advice to a reader who wrote to her. The reader wrote to Strayed (who was using her pseudonym "Sugar") and expressed concern over their life, which they saw as heading in a negative direction. Strayed tells her readers that life is hard and that, although things usually work out in the end, sometimes they won't. Sometimes, she argues, even though you put a lot of effort into something, things won't work out in the end. Life isn't fair, and to be truly fulfilled and at peace with life, humans have to accept how unfair life truly is.
“Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.”
Ultimately, people change. They aren't the same people from year to year. Strayed wrote the above quote to a downtrodden reader who was despondent that people around them changed. Strayed advises that reader—and all of her readers—that because of human nature, people change. She also tells her readers that they shouldn't give up their happiness in search of a person they once knew, because they can never get that person back again (even if that person is themselves).
“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”
This is Strayed's thesis in Tiny Beautiful Things. Strayed herself lived a journey similar to the one she described in the quote above. She spent many years doing undesirable things, like working bad jobs and writing in her journal in preparation for her career as a writer. Before becoming a professional, full-time writer, Strayed had to learn the ropes. She argues that those seemingly menial things weren't done in vain. They were done so that a person—like Strayed herself and Strayed's readers—could achieve their ultimate goal and become the best that they could be.
