Ocean Vuong

And I thought, oh gosh, it's not about the big things.

It's not.

It's about eating freaking chicken nuggets in a McDonald's parking lot with your son.

And I thought, if I am a writer worthy of my salt...

I have to use what I've learned and my skill and talent to hold that.

Let me, if nothing else, in my one life, the hardest thing is to live only once.

Let me use what I've developed all these decades to make that shareable with a reader.

Because I just wasn't seeing it in the media that I was told I should consume.

And sometimes you need the other person to say it because you don't know.

Yes.

And how incredible if

If my only contribution to your beautiful podcast is just to get people to change the way they say hello, that would be amazing.

You pick up a phone and instead of saying, hi, how are you?

Good, good, good.

Just say, hey, what's the last thing that made you joyful?

I wish I knew that a lot sooner.

I would have very different conversations with my mother and the friends I lost to the overdoses and suicide.

I would do it all over, but you learn things so slow.

But every time we pick up the phone, we have the opportunity to switch the gears.

It's always in our hands because we're just holding one at a time, one feeling at a time.