I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

I recently read a novel that I absolutely loved.

I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.

It's called A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

And there was one passage in particular that I just thought was beautiful.

The narrator of this passage is a teenage girl in Japan now who was very worried about

several aspects of her life.

And she's reflecting on a conversation she had had with her great-grandmother who was

a Buddhist nun.

It's the cold fish dying in your stomach feeling.

You try to forget about it, but as soon as you do, the fish starts flopping around

under your heart and reminds you that something truly horrible is happening.

Great-grandmother Giko felt like that when she learned that her only son was going to

be killed in the war.

I know, because I told her about the fish in my stomach, and she said she knew exactly

what I was talking about, and that she had a fish too for many years.

In fact, she said she had lots of fishes, some that were small like sardines, some that

were medium sized like carp, and other ones that were as big as a bluefin tuna.

But the biggest fish of all belonged to Haruki number one, and it was more like the size

of a whale.

She said that after she became a nun and renounced the world, she learned how to open up her heart

so that the whale could swim away.

...