Incidents Around the House

by Josh Malerman

The older I get, the more I think the barometer for intelligence is how kind you are. Because it’s not an easy thing to do, staying mindful, after all you go through in life.

That’s real cruelty. That’s world cruelty. Where it’s not just the idea that one person is cruel, it’s that they believe, and have reason to believe, the whole world feels the same.

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.

thing is, sometimes it’s nice to just vent. Sometimes when you complain, it’s not because you want to be told how to fix it. You just wanna say it sucks. Because sometimes it just sucks.

You’ll notice, the older you get, that it’s the topics people say you shouldn’t talk about that get all messed up beyond repair. My whole life, people said don’t bring up politics and religion and, well, look at things now.