The best divisions are purely fictitious. No story is accurately told in parts, though that is how they’re best told. In reality, there are no clear dividing lines in life, we make them up—not because we’re dumb, but because we’re smart. We make them up because we have to. The human brain, even the best of them, can only picture (up to) seven things at once. You can picture five apples easily enough, but how about eight? Likely, you’re picturing two sets of four. Fifteen apples can be seen only by picturing three sets of five, but if you try putting those apples in disarray your mind loses track. We divide things up because it allows us to circumvent our mental limitations. Humans think in parts, even if thinking in systems is more accuratebecause we can’t think in systems. Thinking in parts is a shortcut, a flawed one, but
Happy lives are lived on a couch. It is hard to find anything as sweet in this world as earplugs, airplane mode, and a cup of hot, black liquid tranquility in the morning. All this, on a couch whose cushions you’ve made thoroughly yours, and the world feels manageable. From this position it feels easy to recollect memories sweetly, filling in the fleeting details with more life than life ever actually contained. From here, the hardest thing about writing is not lying. It’s one of the better problems to have. The lie I feel most drawn to write is that I’m a natural-born traveler, for whom travel comes easy and remarkably. Whenever I travel, however, I’m quickly reminded this is not the case. The truth is no matter how little sleep, how strong the drugs, how nice the pillows, I’m cursed to never be able to sleep on an airplane;