We Learn Nothing - by Tim Kreider #

Date Read: 2019-11-20 #

Notes #

What if you had a brush with death but it did not change your life?

Difference between a bold romantic gesture and stalking? How it is perceived

Sometimes we become delusional beyond control - I was moved to unpleasant recognition by that photo of her face - gaunt and disheveled, deranged, exhausted, utterly broken and lost. I had seen that face before, in the mirror. We’ve just been lucky enough not to have it photographed for the public record… We’ve all worn that diaper.

Don’t want to go home, yet you can’t stay here and have no where to go.

The friend who tells all kinds of stories that aren’t real/true.

They tried to fuck me over (but I showed them) - people love to channel their righteous anger

The divide between Got Out and Stayed Put

The best friend who left (ghosted) and you will never know why. We were friends of circumstance, but no longer now..

The friend who values being right more than the friendship, which eventually causes too much strain to be bearable to maintain.

People, aware of the limit of time, limitations caused by choices so far, judge their peers choices so as to vindicate themselves, so that they know they are right. (single vs married, childless vs parents, careerist vs stay-at-home) So it’s tempting to read other people’s lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own, to covet or denigrate them instead of seeing them for what they are: other people’s lives, island universes, unknowable.

Dealing with a crazy relative.

Being friend with someone who changed sex.

Dealing with death of parent.

Meeting your half-siblings

Being Happy? or overcoming personal obstacles through deliberate effort? “Living fully”?