Reasons to Stay Alive
Matt Haig

Reasons to Stay Alive

supplementals

10 highlights

If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.

To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.

The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don’t become them.

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don’t really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.

The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe’s worth of darkness.

How to stop time: kiss. How to travel in time: read. How to escape time: music. How to feel time: write. How to release time: breathe.

Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim.

Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.

Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax.

Don’t worry about the time you lose to despair. The time you will have afterwards has just doubled its value.