The Life Impossible

by Matt Haig

I am not great at believing in the mystical. I think it is because I was raised a Catholic and have had a life full of unanswered prayers.

I had spent a lifetime hating my appearance in the present and then appreciating it in retrospect. No doubt there was a ninety-year-old Grace in the future who was wondering why I didn’t like the way I looked at seventy-two. If only we could always have the perspective of the future with us as we live that present.

People say that love is rare. I am not so sure. What is rare is something even more desirable. Understanding. There is no point in being loved if you are not understood. They are simply loving an idea of you they have in their mind. They are in love with love. They are in love with their loving. To be understood. And not only that, but to be understood and appreciated once understood.

That is one great thing about having someone by your side. They are a shock absorber to the madness of experience.