A lot of our problems come from living in a culture
that forces us to laugh all the time.
That’s why it can be helpful to gather the darkest truths in one place,
feel sad about them for a while, then head out with a lighter heart, certain
that we have seen the worst life can throw at us.
Here is a very small selection:
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
Social media has taught us a lot about people’s deep minds;
faith in humanity is no longer an option.
We should consider ourselves extremely lucky if we find three friends worthy of the title
in a lifetime.
Most people are ‘good’ not so much from any intrinsic virtue - just a lack of opportunity
to be evil.
We spend most of our lives trying to impress people we don’t even like.
There is no such thing as work-life balance: anything compelling always unbalances your
life.
Life is a process of replacing one anxiety with another.
When it finally happens, happiness chiefly feels worrying.
Most people can spot in 3 minutes faults in our characters we’ll be lucky if we can
manage to identify in a lifetime.
Today it is bad, tomorrow it will be worse, until the worst of all happens.
We can only love people on the basis that we don’t know too much about what actually
goes on in their minds.
Every life is - in its own way - a tragedy.
‘Just be yourself’ is the worst advice one can give most people.
Getting older is a version of looking tired that no amount of sleep can overcome.
Even nice things are so much easier to enjoy once they are safely over.
However sad death might be, it would take a foolhardy adult to accept an offer magically
to return to being five in order to start all over again.
There are still people labouring under the unfortunate impression that the best way to
cheer someone up is to say something cheerful. - Let’s hope we have proved them wrong…