The attainment of happiness is a subtle, cumulative process that is barely perceptible. Which is why so many happy people mistakenly believe they are unhappy.
I have journeyed through life with a mildly disfigured face. From time to time, I am reminded when I meet new people that my face takes some getting used to. It’s fine. I get it. I am confident enough now to know that my personality will soon hide my face as effectively as a hijab. Basically, I don’t take it personally any more. The rejection of my personality? Now that I would take personally.
I never understood this hippy dippy love thing. I was cynical I guess. Now, however, I see very clearly indeed: love is all that matters. And when I say love, I mean love in all its variegated forms, many of which masquerade as anything but.
If I believed in free will, I would say sorry with the utmost sincerity. Since I don’t, I think it is better not to say sorry at all. I still feel guilty, of course. I have no choice.
Imagine a world where sleep is no longer required. What would we do with all that extra time? Would we become twice as wise, twice as wealthy? Or would we just fritter it away carousing, gambling and fornicating?
If you saw a heat map of your daily emotions, it would probably freak you the fuck out. Or perhaps confirm what you already suspect.
I will no longer apologise for apologising. Maybe one day I will even be able to stop apologising altogether. I mean, anything is always possible.
I am fully committed to what I am saying when I am saying it. It’s only later I realise, with a wince of shame, how inappropriate, wrong, insensitive, narcissistic and regrettable it was.
Compulsive truthfulness about one’s innermost thoughts is a species of narcissism. I should know.
The trouble with spiritual equanimity is the contentment it betokens. I mean it’s a great way to live your life if you’re lucky enough to be one of the very few who are offered the chance to do so. But for a writer like me, whose leitmotif is suffering, it is nothing less than a death knell.
I do not stand by anything I say, lest it topples over and crushes me under the colossal weight of its banality.
My biological father, according to my biological mother, was a womanising wastrel. What, I often wonder, did my biological mother see in him then? And more to the point, what does my wife see in me?
They say the Left has embraced Nietzsche. About time.
I have become more loving. This may very well signal the end of my life as a so-called artist.
