We can’t say what it’s made of, happiness. It’s a hazy, ever retreating, shadowlike something out there somewhere. But happiness doesn’t add, it subtracts. It’s not something to get but something to unbury.

When things really are that bad, our first instinct is to find out who did this and tell it a thousand times. But nothing out there needs to change. The pivot happens in the mind, the only place from which we can change.

Life is not random. It gives us a paved road, and we can step onto it or stay stuck in the tar of our faithlessness. On the nudge before the shove, and why waiting is the design.

There’s no strategy that wins this game. There’s only the choice to stop playing.

When we’re alone with nothing to do, the brain doesn’t rest. It goes looking for a job, and it will take a bad one over none at all. This is what happens in that gap — and what closes it.

We’ve built an economy out of our own existence — guilt as currency, martyrdom as proof we’re good, self-punishment as payment. But there is no debt, and peace is available.