Nothing Good Gets Away

Nothing good gets away.

When John Steinbeck’s teenage son was feeling lovesick, he wrote him one of the most heartfelt, empathetic letters I’ve read. “And don’t worry about losing. If it is right -- it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away,” he wrote.

I love this, and I’m also challenged by it in the best way.

More often than not, I find that telling somebody “if it’s meant to be, it’ll be” to be more harmful than helpful. And this quote and the surrounding letter seems to glide dangerously close to that sentiment.

But the moment I read it, it struck a chord, and I bookmarked it. I had parts of it partially memorized without effort. Why?

Maybe it’s because what I really believe is that nothing good gets away. And that’s ever so slightly different from saying that everything happens for a reason, or that everything always works out.

Without denying the bad, or the hardships that come your way, everything good has a way of persisting. The memory of loved ones. The tendency of nature to self-repair. The resilience of refugees. Those who stand up against injustice. The people who decide to get up another day and try again.

I still can’t reconcile everything I’ve seen at a global level. But at the very least, in my life, the right things have happened. Nothing good gets away.