Things are ordinary, but maybe they're ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters.

We don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts us in the moment and what doesn't. And that's not worth much.

The person you marry is the person you fight with. The house you buy is the house you repair. The dream job you take is the job you stress over. Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice—whatever makes us feel good will also inevitably make us feel bad. What we gain is also what we lose. What creates our positive experiences will define our negative experiences.

Happiness comes from the same thing: caring about something greater than yourself, believing that you are a contributing component in some much larger entity, that your life is but a mere side process of some great unintelligible production.

Is everything okay? How are you feeling?' I pause for a moment, still smiling. 'Alive. Very alive.

The problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health

The point isn't to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

That means the more something threatens to change how you view yourself, how successful/unsuccessful you believe yourself to be, how well you see yourself living up to your values, the more you will avoid ever getting around to doing it.

There's a certain comfort that comes with knowing how you fit in the world. Anything that shakes up that comfort- even if it could potentially make your life better- is inherently scary.