The Humans

by Matt Haig

After a while, didn’t you crave flaws? Love and lust and misunderstandings, and maybe even a little violence to liven things up? Didn’t light need shade?

Listen, emotions have a logic. Without emotions humans wouldn’t care for each other, and if they didn’t care for each other the species would have died out. To care for others is self-preservation. You care for someone and they care for you.

(I have to admit that humans waste a lot of their time – almost all of it – with hypothetical stuff. I could be rich. I could be famous. I could have been hit by that bus. I could have been born with fewer moles and bigger breasts. I could have spent more of my youth learning foreign languages. They must exercise the conditional tense more than any other known life form.)

Some humans not only liked violence, but craved it, I realised. Not because they wanted pain, but because they already had pain and wanted

That it will never come again, Is what makes life so sweet. – Emily Dickinson

Love was a way to live forever in a single moment, and it was also a way to see yourself as you had never actually seen yourself, and made you realise – having done so – that this view was a more meaningful one than any of your previous self-perceptions and selfdeceptions.

The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change.

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

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

To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunise