Today, I read the best letter ever written.

And it wasn’t penned by someone famous or a literary scholar. It was written – literally, hand-written – by my little sister.

Using big, loopy letters on two pages of lined paper, front and back, with blue ink, she expressed more about herself than I think even she understood.

In Spanish, she addressed our grandparents (Baba and Bebo) after watching a powerful documentary about Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor. She started the letter by admitting she’d never asked all her questions about our grandparents’ time in Poland, where they were born. How much racism had they encountered as Jews? What was it like fleeing the country right before World War II and seeking refuge in Argentina?

She told them that as she wrote the letter, she was a month shy of graduating college and had no idea what to do with her life. How could she ever be happy when she already knew none of her dreams would ever come true during her lifetime? Her dreams of peace in the Middle East, her dreams of true women’s equality, her dreams of a world without pain, fear, hunger...how could she ever really achieve any of them?

In the middle of her eloquence, she stopped. She interrupted herself to apologize.

She said she didn’t have sufficient vocabulary in Spanish, a vocabulary strong enough to communicate what she was feeling. To those of us who had the good fortune of reading her writing, it was a needless apology. We’d never heard something better communicated. Never had a heart been better transcribed into words.

The end of her letter came back to the beginning. She had no idea what she would do in the future, but she knew who she was: she was a Jewish, Argentine woman. Her rich history enforced her identity. In the meantime, she wanted time away from term papers, working a 9-5, dealing with parents...time to get away from this world. That’s why she proposed spending a couple months with them in Buenos Aires, Argentina to figure out her next step.

Inadvertently, she was more honest and showed more of herself in that letter than anyone in anything I’ve ever read. It was so disarming: she was there, naked, her true self. Without even knowing how powerful a correspondence she was writing or how many layers she was shedding off with every letter she formed.

What I wouldn’t give to know myself even 1/10 the amount she knows herself. The strong sense of identity, the self-knowledge, that came across in her writing was enviable. To be so self aware, so honest with herself and with the world around her – how wonderfully refreshing.

And now it’s 2:30am and I’m typing this blog. I’ll probably have to save it and read it again in the morning to fix the tons of typos and nonsensical sentences within it. But I can’t sleep. All I can think about is who I am and how I can ever figure it out as well as my sister has.

I talked to my best friend on the phone for an hour about this. She said the best way to figure out what you want is to know what you like. In that spirit, she asked me to describe my perfect day in detail.

I had no idea.

She offered to describe hers first. Then she described her boyfriend’s. Then she put the question back to me.

I said it would start out on a porch, facing the ocean, caressed by a soft breeze, the air cool enough that I would wrap myself in a blanket, sip hot chocolate, and read a very good book. Later I would get a massage, in a place with real ambiance, not some unoriginal, sterile room. Afterwards I would go to some quirky, hole-in-the-wall coffee shop that few people know about, and write on my laptop, maybe start a new novel. Finally, I would grab a delicious meal at an intimate restaurant with someone I really like. Later, the two of us would watch movies together snuggled up on my couch.

What about you?