Incidents Around the House

by Josh Malerman

So the goal, I think, is to stay kind for as long as you can, no matter what happens to you. No matter what you go through, no matter how many breaks you get and how many you don’t. And I think you always have to remember that if someone is mean to you, they are like that with everybody else too.

If there’s one thing I could convey to you, one thing that would take root in you just like the need to eat and sleep, it would be this: try to stay kind as long as you can. For all of your life. Always be mindful of what others are enduring. And whatever you do, most of all, don’t allow someone else’s meanness, someone else’s cruelty, to get inside of you.

If you think about it, every time you’ve ever been scared in your life so far, you’ve also survived whatever you were scared of.

Everything you thought you weren’t strong enough to get through…you got through it. Or else you wouldn’t be here to know you got through it.