Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

by Stephen Jenkinson

“Remember how it went? Looking and looking for months, giving up more than once, your agent pleading with you to just look at this new listing, and you reluctantly driving over. And before you were in the front door you know this was It, the one you’d held out for. And you went from room to room with more excitement, and you were already half moved in, and you called your husband from the new kitchen and announced, ‘This is the one.’ And you brought him the next day, except this time you saw all the things you didn’t see the first time, all the little things that together made you wonder whether it was a good deal after all, and by the time you got home the deal was off, and no one knew what to do anymore, and you were both exhausted.” She nodded and remembered something like that. “If we had given you a mental competency exam that day, you would have failed the part that requires you to have a consistently expressed wish over time. You wouldn’t have been allowed to make any significant financial decisions because you failed the test. You wouldn’t have been allowed to buy the house anyway, no matter what you decided, because you were not capable of knowing what was best for you. You would have been a candidate for psychotherapy, and maybe for medication.” Here her eyes narrowed. “But nobody held you to that standard, because buying a house can make you nuts. You’d have been given the benefit of the doubt, and everyone would have looked the other way. You would have signed ...