Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

by Lulu Miller

How marvelous it is to watch the acrobat as he flips through the air, pulling turns and accomplishing the seemingly impossible, to gaslight even someone’s experience of death.

The very mind-set we define our national identity in opposition to—the evil that we tell our schoolchildren started with the Nazis, the others, the bad guys—we were the first in the world to make it national policy.

I was thinking. Snorkel is best invention. God bless snorkel inventor. It win peace prize?

The best way of ensuring that you don’t miss them, these gifts, the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly, is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at. To examine each object in the avalanche of Chaos with curiosity, with doubt. Is this storm a bummer? Maybe it’s a chance to get the streets to yourself, to be licked by raindrops, to reset. Is this party as boring as I assume it will be? Maybe there will be a friend waiting, with a cigarette in her mouth, by the back door of the dance floor, who will laugh with you for years to come, who will transmute your shame to belonging.

Scientists have discovered, it’s true, that employing positive illusions will help you achieve your goals. But I have slowly come to believe that far better things await outside of the tunnel vision of your goals.