Episode 9: How To Stay Sane In a World Which Isn't
How to stay sane in a world that isn’t
Life’s a mess. Yes I know. ‘Look on the bright side.’ ‘Glass can be half full, or half empty.’ ‘Goodreads and Yogi Tea’ and blah-blah-blah. But for the honest people, life’s a mess. Not just something you quote your way through, but a real, beautiful, self-sabotaging mess of a thing. No matter how much tea you drink.
The kind of mess, which can be hard to sort through or make sense of. The kind of mess, you can get lost in. Kind of like one of those paintings you find at (or contribute to, if you’re one of those people) a modern art gallery. The kind where it’s literally just a line on a piece of paper. It brings up all sorts of questions. Like, is there even an art to this thing, or is it just a joke? Was it made by a genius graduate art student looking to get back in touch with something they lost? Or by a fifth-grader, wishing they were a genius graduate art student?
Who gave them the keys?
And like the canvas, it comes with all sorts of descriptions. Inspirational idioms about what makes life life – like the plaque beside the ‘painting’ that questions what makes art, art. The plaque which swears on its copper little soul that this is modern masterpiece – and if you only look deeply enough, and think carefully enough, the truth will be plain to see.
More likely, it’s just a line on a piece of paper.
One small, black thing on an endless canvas of white.
And maybe that’s the point.
Because at the end of the day, isn’t that just about how much time we’re given? How significant we are in the bigger picture?
And yet, what would that piece of paper be were it not for that line?
What would your world be were it not for you?
And how do you make sense of that? Here are some thoughts.
1) Everything happens. Not for a reason. Not without reason. It just happens. Like that moment when you decided not to do something, and it changed everything. Or the one turning point which led to where you are now. The small thing they said which turned your whole day around.
These things happened. Past-tense. Meaning, each happening was a building block of your present. And everything happening now, is a building block of your future. Small or big – in a life full of variables and branching paths, these causes leave a mark.
Just ask Edward. Edward was a smart guy – a mathematician who developed his interest in weather patterns while still an undergrad at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. It was
