How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division

by Elif Shafak

Motherlands are castles made of glass. In order to leave them, you have to break something – a wall, a social convention, a cultural norm, a psychological barrier, a heart. What you have broken will haunt you. To be an emigré, therefore, means to forever bear shards of glass in your pockets. It is easy to forget they are there, light and minuscule as they are, and go on with your life, your little ambitions and important plans, but at the slightest contact the shards will remind you of their presence. They will cut you deep.

Very much this.

‘The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world as if it were nothing at all. No other loss occurs so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.’

Perhaps in an era when everything is in constant flux, in order to be more sane, we need a blend of conscious optimism and creative pessimism. In the words of Gramsci, ‘the pessimism of the intellect, the optimism of the will’.