How to Stop Time

by Matt Haig

Human beings, as a rule, simply don’t accept things that don’t fit their worldview.

The idea that you have one true love, that no one else will compare after they have gone. It’s a sweet idea, but the reality is terror itself. To be faced with all those lonely years after. To exist when the point of you has gone.

If you live long enough you realise that every proven fact is later disproved and then proven again.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

It was depressing that he found it so much easier to question his sanity than my reality.

The longer you live, the more you realise that nothing is fixed. Everyone will become a refugee if they live long enough. Everyone would realise their nationality means little in the long run. Everyone would see their worldviews challenged and disproved. Everyone would realise that the thing that defines a human being is being a human.

Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn’t being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

‘I am not sure I have ever met someone like you,’ I said. ‘That is good. What point would my life have, if there was a duplicate?’

We kissed and I closed my eyes and inhaled lavender and her, and I felt so terrified and so in love that I realised they – the terror, the love – were one and the same thing.

There is a pause. His face clenches, building up to something. ‘Did you mean what you said last night? About killing someone.’ ‘Oh yes. Yes, I did. In a desert. Arizona. Quite a long time ago. I don’t advise it.’ He laughs, doesn’t quite know if it is a joke. (It isn’t.) ‘Did you ever get caught?’ ‘No, not in the way you mean. No, I didn’t. But as you get older, Anton, you realise that you never get away with things. The human mind has its own. . . prisons. You don’t have a choice over everything in life.’

‘It is not for myself. I am not scared for myself. I will not be truly alive without you. I will be a ghost that breathes.’

Free will might be overrated.

I have that urge to get out of here, out of the restaurant. It is almost as strong as the urge to want to talk to her for all eternity. But not quite.

I stand up. ‘I’ve got to go.’ ‘No, you don’t. Please. Please. I like you. You can’t run away from everything.’ ‘You’re wrong. You can. You can run and run and run. You can run your entire life. You can run and change and keep running.’

As far as I can see, this is a problem with living in the twenty-first century. Many of us have every material thing we need, so the job of marketing is now to tie the economy to our emotions, to make us feel like we need more by making us want things we never needed before. We are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly travelled if we have been to only ten other countries. To feel too old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren’t photoshopped and filtered.

But the thing is: you cannot know the future. You look at the news and it looks terrifying. But you can never be sure. That is the whole thing with the future. You don’t know. At some point you have to accept that you don’t know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.

Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don’t expect, I feel civilisation has become a little safer.