The Humans

by Matt Haig

This was, I would later realise, a planet of things wrapped inside things. Food inside wrappers. Bodies inside clothes. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.

Magazines are very popular, despite no human ever feeling better for having read them. Indeed, their chief purpose is to generate a sense of inferiority in the reader that consequently leads to them needing to buy something, which they do, and then feel even worse, and so need to buy another magazine to see what they can buy next. It is an eternal and unhappy spiral that goes by the name of capitalism and it is really quite popular.

Maybe this was the only meaning they had on this planet. Their purpose was simply to pursue the enlightenment of orgasm. A few seconds of relief from the surrounding dark.

There are other questions, too, that humans have in bookstores. Such as, is it one of those books they read to feel clever, or one of those they will pretend never to have read in order to stay looking clever? Will it make them laugh, or cry? Or will it simply force them to stare out of the window watching the tracks of raindrops? Is it a true story? Or is it a false one? Is it the kind of story that will work on their brain or one which aims for lower organs? Is it one of those books that ends up acquiring religious followers or getting burned by them? Is it a book about mathematics or – like everything else in the universe – simply because of it?

But I am scared. You have every right to be. You are among the humans.

Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.

Everything in human life was a test. That was why they all looked so stressed out.

‘So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?’

You see, sometimes to save something you have to kill a little piece of it.

Human life, I realised, got progressively worse as you got older, by the sound of things. You arrived, with baby feet and hands and infinite happiness, and then the happiness slowly evaporated as your feet and hands grew bigger. And then, from the teenage years onwards, happiness was something you could lose your grip of, and once it started to slip it gained mass. It was as if the knowledge that it could slip was the thing that made it more difficult to hold, no matter how big your feet and hands were.

That was the price of human civilisation – to create it they had to close the door on their true selves. And so they are lost, that is how I understand it. And that is why they invented art: books, music, films, plays, painting, sculpture. They invented them as bridges back to themselves, back to who they are. But however close they get they are for ever removed.

It was the eyes, on Earth, that mattered. You saw the person, and the life inside them, if you saw the eyes.

‘I am hurt and so I hurt’.

Love is what the humans are all about but they don’t understand it. If they understood it, then it would disappear.

Love is scary because it pulls you in with an intense force, a supermassive black hole which looks like nothing from the outside but from the inside challenges every reasonable thing you know. You lose yourself, like I lost myself, in the warmest of annihilations.

I realised that if getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.

And I knew the point of love right then. The point of love was to help you survive. The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was. The ever-moving, ever-changing present. And the present was fickle. It could only be caught by letting go.

So I went to work, and I realised why work was so important on Earth. It stopped you feeling lonely.

Laughter, I realised, was the reverberating sound of a truth hitting a lie.

In every life there is a moment. A crisis. One that says: what I believe is wrong. It happens to everyone, the only difference is how that knowledge changes them. In most cases, it is simply a case of burying that knowledge and pretending it isn’t there. That is how humans grow old. That is ultimately what creases their faces and curves their backs and shrinks their mouths and ambitions. The weight of that denial. The stress of it. This is not unique to humans. The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change. I

Because happiness is possible for me now. It exists on the other side of the hurt.

Sometimes, to be yourself you will have to forget yourself and become something else. Your character is not a fixed thing. You will sometimes have to move to keep up with it.

Happiness is not out here. It is in there.

If there is a sunset, stop and look at it. Knowledge is finite. Wonder is infinite.

A paradox. The things you don’t need to live – books, art, cinema, wine and so on – are the things you need to live.

At some point, bad things are going to happen. Have someone to hold on to.

Alcohol in the evening is very enjoyable. Hangovers in the morning are very unpleasant. At some point you have to choose: evenings, or mornings.

Don’t ever be afraid of telling someone you love them. There are things wrong with your world, but an excess of love is not one.

It is not the length of life that matters. It’s the depth. But while burrowing, keep the sun above you.

It’s not the technique, it’s the method. It’s not the words, it’s the melody.

No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.

Politeness is often fear. Kindness is always courage. But caring is what makes you human. Care more, become more human.

If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.

A watched pot never boils. That is all you need to know about quantum physics.

Which is to say: don’t kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.

A single atom is all you need to make a very big explosion.

You don’t have to be anything. Don’t force it. Feel your way, and don’t stop feeling your way until something fits. Maybe nothing will. Maybe you are a road, not a destination. That is fine. Be a road. But make sure it’s one with something to look at out of the window.

This was, I realised, a beautiful planet. Maybe it was the most beautiful of all. But beauty creates its own troubles. You look at a waterfall or an ocean or a sunset and you find yourself wanting to share it with someone.

‘Dogs are better than human beings because they know but don’t tell.’

If I can stop one heart from breaking, that poet said, I shall not live in vain.

Sentimentality is another human flaw. A distortion. Another twisted by-product of love, serving no rational purpose. And yet, there was a force behind it as authentic as any other.