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We are, a lot of us, a great deal sadder, more anxious, more incomplete and more restless than we really need to be because of something very large that is missing from our lives. What’s worse, we don’t even know what this thing is and how much we crave it,…
The arguments for approaching life in a grave, serious and unsmiling mood are overwhelming: we are clearly a profoundly wicked species, we continually perpetrate monstrous suffering on one another, our greed…
The great drawback of the word ‘paranoia’ is that it can sound like something only very obviously disturbed people would ever end up being. We associate the term with types who…
There is one particularly salient question we should ask in order to measure our levels of emotional well-being: do you broadly feel that you have the right to exist and are,…
In an odd but quietly very important way, works of architecture ‘speak’ to us. Some buildings, streets and even whole cities seem to speak of chaos, aggression or military pride; others…
This is an essay about beauty – and in particular about what makes something beautiful. We want to give you the answer right away: BEAUTY = ORDER and COMPLEXITY In other…
For noble and very understandable reasons, we’ve come to associate maturity and kindness with a capacity not to give up on people. Our heroes and heroines keep faith with those they…
One of the more puzzling aspects of the way we’re built is that our emotional development does not necessarily or automatically keep pace with our physical growth. We can be fifty-five…
This is for those among us who are, secretly, very stuck – that is, who are entirely committed to staying, wholly tempted to leave – and entirely unable to resolve their…
We have reduced it down to a trite error – ’worrying about what the neighbours think’ – as if this were a trap that only a mediocrity could ever fall into.…
The fastest, easiest and most inadvertent technique for messing up one’s life remains that of getting into a serious relationship with the wrong person: with very little effort, and without any…
To a greater extent than we perhaps realise, when it comes to what sort of relationships we are allowed to have, our societies present us with a menu with only a…
1. You are, to a far greater extent than you perhaps realise, already alone. The condition you fear will happen has already happened. To be formally alone would merely mean concretising…
‘Can people change?’ The question may sound somewhat abstract and disinterested, as if one were asking for a friend or for the universe, but it is likely to be a good…
This is a piece about geese, jackdaws, a man called Konrad Lorenz – and your love life. Konrad Lorenz, who was born in 1903 and died in 1989, was an Austrian…
Amidst the many challenging characters we may encounter in the course of relationships, psychological life throws up an especially tricky type: the person who wants to ‘own’ us (by which is…
It’s not necessarily a well-flagged problem: we tend to situate the risks to our happiness elsewhere – but for a proportion of us, the greatest obstacle to our flourishing lies in…
One of the most beautiful and evocative of all words is ‘home’. Folded within it are suggestions of safety, understanding, sympathy, warmth and belonging. It is to home that we turn…
Maybe you’ve crashed again – and you’re in the dark familiar place. As ever, one mess-up reminds you of all the fiascos you’ve generated in the past and, more broadly, of…