I've Never Been (Un) Happier

by Shaheen Bhatt

said . . . that he was more afraid of being understood than misunderstood. Because if he was misunderstood, only his intellectual vanity would be hurt. But if he was understood, he would feel even worse, because that meant that the person who understood him would have had to have suffered enough in order to have understood what he was saying in the first place.

Depression is the monster that’s hiding under your bed, and here’s the thing, monsters can only live in the dark.

no one can disrespect you or shame you without your permission.

‘First, there’s nothing wrong with being stupid. I’m stupid,’

‘Only stupid people can learn things, beta. Smart people think they already know everything.’

‘If someone calls you stupid and you are stupid, then it shouldn’t bother you because what they’re saying is true, and if someone calls you stupid and you aren’t stupid, then also it shouldn’t bother you because what they’re saying is not true. Neither the truth nor lies should trouble you.’

we isolate ourselves

when we’re in pain and then we spend all our time wondering why no one gets us. They don’t get us because they have no idea who we are. How could they? We’ve never told them.

‘You want to be happy because society has convinced you that so-called “normal” people are happy all the time. You want to be happy because you want to fit in,’ he said simply.

‘Take off the mask. You aren’t happy? Fine, you aren’t happy. One day you will be. And then you’ll be sad again. Accept that and stop wasting your energy chasing something that doesn’t exist. You can’t spend your life feeling bad about feeling bad.’

The only permanent fixture in life is change. Change. Change. Change.

On the one hand, it’s the awareness of constant change and transience that sends me into a spiral of anxiety, while on the other, it’s hugely freeing to realize that nothing I have now, not even my emotional state of mind, is going to stay the same.

very idea I’m afraid of: transience. I

remind myself if happiness is fleeting, then so is sadness.