Why Fish Don't Exist

14 January 2021: I finished Lulu Miller's wonderfully compelling and strange book last night. Basically read it in three sittings. I first heard about it on Radiolab and actually bought the book for my dad. He read it, but I don't think he enjoyed it, telling me it was "kind of depressing." I think I see why he feels that way--it comes from a worldview that he might find hard to swallow. It kind of rests in the idea of chaos and uncertainty. 

From the closing pages: "When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them. But because they are as much a part of the Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot" (191). 

I am so much my father's daughter that I can see and feel how that would not be his thing (and there are other reasons, too, I fear he might not have liked it). I found it utterly captivating, though, and quietly thrilling. In this moment, the idea of maybe somehow plucking happiness out of chaos gives me hope.