The Words That Broke Me

Life Can Be Great Again

I was living in the French Alps when it happened - I had a nervous breakdown. I was 22 years old. It was horrible (inside my head). I lived in a little house on a mountain. The kind of place that should, by any reasonable measure, have made my life feel extraordinary. And it was. But my head was also very busy trying to solve the mystery of existence.

I opened a book and read a short sentence in the introduction.

Man is a thinking monkey.

The writer meant it lightly. A sort of cheerful shorthand for what we really are: animals who evolved the capacity for complex thought, living in a universe that didn’t arrange itself for our benefit and doesn’t much notice our presence. Nothing malicious. He was just being honest.

And something in me collapsed…

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