what calvin and hobbes taught me about saying goodbye before learning to say hello

I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes. My grandmother won the entire collection through bets with her friends—the prize was always a Calvin and Hobbes book. She gave them to my mom, who passed them down to me when I was a kid. So much of how I've navigated my childhood and early adulthood has come from the lessons I learned from these strips.

Ever so often, the goodbye is already written into the hello.

You will never get a warning. The things that matter most will arrive without announcement and leave the same way.

Sometimes you are the only one who knows what was lost.

You love something so much it becomes part of how you understand yourself, and to everyone else it is just a stuffed tiger that was not worth stealing.

There is always a goodbye.

Say hello anyway.

Tanay Gondil