Wendell Berry's novel Hannah Coulter focuses on the life of a simple but wise Kentucky farm mother. She and her husband Nathan have been talking about what it's like when the children grow and go away. Hannah muses,
The chance you had in life is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people's lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be someone else. What you must do is this: "Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks."
"I am not all the way capable of so much," adds Hannah, "but those are the right instructions."
