The End of Loneliness

by Benedict Wells

And if you just do what you’ve always done, you’ll just get what you’ve always got.”

“I don’t like to say this to you again, but you can’t bring back the past, or change it,” said my brother, on the phone. “Yes,” I said, “you can.”

Life is not a zero-sum game. It owes us nothing, and things just happen the way they do. Sometimes they’re fair and everything makes sense; sometimes they’re so unfair we question everything. I pulled the mask off the face of Fate, and all I found beneath it was chance.

Things come and go. For a very long time I couldn’t accept this. Now, suddenly, I find it easy.