The School of Life

Once viewed as a kind of long dream that meant nothing and could be forgotten about as soon as it was over, childhood is now conceived of as a momentously consequential period in which the entire emotional disposition of a person will be formed and their chances of a mentally healthy life determined.

When the world gets smaller, we get larger – and feel less vulnerable, more competent

We easily forget how much love is connected to being able to look after something

The road to greater confidence begins with a ritual of telling oneself solemnly every morning, before heading out for the day, that one is a muttonhead, a cretin, a dumbbell and an imbecile. A few more acts of folly should, thereafter, not matter very much.

they aren’t using their pessimism in a defensive way. They aren’t compelled to denigrate everything in case they get hurt. They’re still able to take pleasure in small things and to hope that one or two details might – every now and then – go right. They just know that nothing has been guaranteed.

Where the melancholy suffer particularly is around demands to be cheerful.

Because melancholy is based on an awareness of the imperfection of everything, on the

perennial gap between what should ideally be and what actually is, the melancholic are especially receptive to small islands of beauty and goodness. They can be deeply moved by flowers, by a tender moment in a children’s book, by an unexpected gesture of kindness from someone they barely know, by sunlight falling on an old wall at dusk.

The melancholy can be intensely grateful and sometimes giddily joyful because they know grief so well – not because they have never suffered at all.

In so far as the melancholy person can lay claim to any form of superior intelligence, it isn’t because they have read a lot of books or dress fetchingly in black. It’s because they have succeeded at finding the best possible accommodation between the infinite disappointments and occasional wonders of life.