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Lessons From One Tree Hill (Part 1)

I'm a big fan of One Tree Hill--and I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit it, because, seriously, love that show. It's bittersweet that this season will be the final one for the show. It has run a good course, defying expectations of failure, and shown us all lessons of life (while everyone also looks fabulous and has way more drama in their lives than I hope I ever will). There are a lot of moments and quotes from the show in its nine season run that I have found really powerful, so in honor of the final season, I am doing a series on lessons from One Tree Hill.

A particularly poignant moment for me was at the end of Season 5. Lucas has been in a really dark place with a breakup and is struggling to deal with it--his best friend Haley has some words for him.

Video doesn't want to be embedded so watch here.


You know that romantic notion that all the garbage and the pain is really healing and beautiful and sort of poetic? It’s not. It’s just garbage and it’s pain. You know what’s better? Love. The day that you start thinking that love is overrated is the day that you’re wrong. The only thing wrong with love and faith and belief is not having it.


At age 18, when I saw this episode, this was a big shift in thinking for me. I'm a wallower. I used to go over things in my head over and over trying to pinpoint what/where it went wrong. I wrote really bad poetry. I thought all this would help me figure out how to be happy.


Surprise, it didn't. It was only when I figured out how to focus on the good things and not just relive all the hard stuff that I realized I could actually be happy. Stop focusing so much on what I had lost or what I didn't have--focus instead on the incredible amount of love I have in my life from the people around me. Hopefully someone else would've said this to me at some point, but the fact is, this novel idea came to me from One Tree Hill.