Controlling the Way We Respond

I read books, and I very often choose secondhand books for my fiction choices and then pass them on to others when I am done.  So, we are talking about hundreds of previously owned books passing through my life.  This past weekend I was reading a book and I got to the last page, and it ended mid-sentence and careful inspection revealed that the last few pages had been ripped out.  I have questions, why did they get ripped out?  Why then was it donated to a secondhand store?  How in the world am I going to know how this book ends? It is hard to imagine what happened, but just like in other things sometimes we must accept that we will never know how it ends, there are things left unsaid, people suddenly leave, something ends, and we must go on and figure out how to live with the unknowing. We have to think about what in this situation can we control, how we are going to react and behave and really we are not in charge of much else.  My only choice here to accept that until I find another copy, I am simply left to wonder. Do what you can with what you can, until you can do better.