• I fell silent, with a sense of satiety, of futility. I might, I reflected, go on questioning my mother for hours and still not come to a conclusion about anything: her life, and she herself, had by now attained a degree of utter meaninglessness which amounted, in the long run, to a sort of mystery at the same time both dull and impenetrable.

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • Consider watching through a window as a family enjoys a home-cooked meal. You might imagine how it feels to be part of this group—their warmth and happiness, their sense of belonging as they pass dishes back and forth. Now imagine being part of this family. Maybe you do feel warmth and happiness, but those feelings are much more complex, less tidy. What came before the dinner? What comes after? Are you actually present, or thinking about something else? Your family is not a snapshot or a concept; it’s messy, in flux, evolving. It has depth and continuity. No matter how lovely the dinner is in reality, it can never really live up to what the observer imagines. Because what they imagine is actually just a symbol—an idea they’ve adapted from TV, movies, and marketing their entire lives about what it means to be part of a happy family.

    #187: Drowning in envy
    Haley Nahman

  • Excessive sorrow for our loved ones who have left this world is not a Christian act, but an act of godlessness. We prepare ourselves in this life for eternal life. We must be thankful for everything and thank God for taking the souls of our departed loved ones to Himself.

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them. To know what it was like to have one place where we belonged. Where we fit.

     —Michele Filgate

  • “You never know what’s going to happen to people,” Michael was saying. “I have a friend,” he said, “she’s very funny, very generous. She could have been an actress.”

    Light Years
    James Salter

  • You have a lovely text threads with friends from your childhood or your 20s that pop off every few days.

    But let’s be real: it’s just not enough. When you let yourself think about it, you feel incredibly isolated.

    The Dark Heart of Individualism
    Anne Helen Petersen

  • “The world is weary of me, and I am weary of it.” 

    —Charles D’Orleans

  • The hardest thing about life, it seems, is the impossibility of holding on to it

    —Grazie Sophia Christie

  • For several days Michel kept the photograph beside him on his bedside table. The mysteries of time were banal, he told himself, this was the way of the world: youthful optimism fades, and happiness and confidence evaporate. He lay on his Bultex mattress, struggling to come to terms with the transience of life.

    The Elementary Particles
    Michel Houellebecq

  • “Deep inside, each man feels—and believes—himself to be immortal, even if he knows he will perish the next moment. We can understand everything, admit everything, realize everything, except our death, even when we “ponder it unremittingly and even when we are resigned to it.”

    —E. M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born