It’s far into the night, but sleep won’t come. You turn over. Perhaps a different position will quieten the mind. Or maybe the other side was better after all. Panic sets in. Not sleeping is a disaster. For very understandable reasons our culture has arrived at extremely negative assessments of…
Part I: The Ills of Modernity The conditions of modernity are in many ways profoundly better than those under which the vast majority of humanity lived for more or less the…
Someone we loved so much has died. It can be hard to know where to turn. For religions, dying was regarded as an essential, immensely important, part of existence; it was…
The modern age is inherently anthropocentric in outlook (from anthropos, greek for human), that is, it places human beings and their experience and concerns at the center of the hierarchy, above…
They’ve gone – and what we need most of all to understand is why? What is striking is that, despite what friends and well-meaning acquaintances tell us, we already know. It…
Generally, our culture takes a very positive view of memories and the act of remembering: we esteem the study of history, we are expected to take photos to capture precious moments;…
The intensity and suffering exacted by a heartbreak depends not only on the core fact that we’ve been left; it also decisively depends on how we’ve been left. Our hurt can…
It sounds paradoxical: that we can be heartbroken even though a lover is still with us. And yet, it’s not so strange, because the source of heartbreak is not precisely the…
We are likely to be focused, in the immediate circumstances of a break-up, on what happened in the last few weeks or months to explain the end of a relationship. But…
Our lover has hurt us deeply. Our suffering is at least comparable to being robbed or physically assaulted. This hurts a lot more than someone stealing our phone or bicycle. However,…
Life is full of moments where we are meant to feel certain things. The demand starts in early childhood: it’s our birthday – and we are meant to feel happy. Dad…
Sometimes, we are not only left in love; we are left for someone else – a rival who comes to assume a large, indeed monstrous position in our imaginations. The torture…
Although our societies have, in theory, a very high regard for the idea of community, it is telling that, in practice, ‘community centres’ are often the most uninspiring and unlovely of…
There is a certain sort of relationship that is alternately passionate, fiery and painfully unfulfilling – and that tends to puzzle both outsiders and its participants; a relationship between one person…
We live in an age increasingly prepared to see hurtful aspects lurking within many apparently so-called minor situations, and ready to lend greater public acknowledgement to what had previously been merely…
It’s natural to imagine that the highest virtue in love would be kindness and, a close second, politeness. But there is an odd danger lurking here: a relationship where we are…
It would be most of our first choices to have relationships in the real world; but for many of us, it is a great deal more plausible to pursue them with,…
In so many areas of life, it’s easy to feel desperate that we have failed to live up to our own expectations. We are evidently not beautiful enough, rich enough, intelligent…
Compassion for others is an attractive notion, but in reality we often find it extremely difficult to be kindly and understanding towards people who make a lot of noise at unwanted…