All Our Wrong Todays

by Elan Mastai

when you invent a new technology, you also invent the accident of that technology.

I remember, as a kid, when I first understood that only half of every tree is visible, that the roots in the soil are equal to the branches in the sky, that a whole other half is underground. It took me a lot longer, well into adulthood, to realize people are like that too.

“He’s lost, my love, so you must help him be found,”

Bland friendliness is easier than spending even one joule of energy formulating an opinion on someone fundamentally irrelevant to you.

“Sympathy is a transaction,” Penelope said. “If you let your grief be for sale, it’ll end up worthless.”

When you jump off a cliff, falling can look a whole lot like flying, for a while anyway.

The problem with knowing people too well is that their words stop meaning anything and their silences start meaning everything.

Then again, are any of our choices actual choices? The brain is a soupy lightning storm swirling and crackling in three pounds of wet meat. Do conscious decisions even exist, or is everything an instinctual response gussied up with malformed logic?

Like everyone, she carries around a suitcase of troubles everywhere she goes, but she leaves it unlocked, for anyone to rifle through if they care enough to be curious.

here’s what I think this book is about—there’s no such thing as the life you’re supposed to have.