whyisthisinteresting

The Bibiliotherapy Edition

We live in an era when we diagnose ourselves and each other constantly, and we've developed an enormous infrastructure for explaining our problems. We've become very good at prescribing information, but information doesn't always provide consolation. Knowing more about grief, for example, isn't necessarily the same as feeling less alone in it.

themarginalian.org

An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of Candid Connection

Nothing makes me so dejected as to have met my friends, for they make me doubt if it is possible to have any friends. I feel what a fool I am.

themarginalian.org

Loneliness, Resilience, and the Right Choice: Poet Diane Ackerman on What She Learned While Working at a Suicide Prevention Hotline

So often loneliness comes from being out of touch with parts of oneself. We go searching for those parts in other people, but there's a difference between feeling separate from others and separate from oneself.

theparisreview.org

Paris Review - Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists

This year so far, I had said, Hello, Goodbye, Do you have change for twenty dollars, Where is the bathroom, and I love you. I had meant every word.

whyisthisinteresting

The Unwillingly Courteous Edition

I know in fact that to chatGPT transcendence is just a word. I had become unwillingly courteous. A friend told me I was being illogical and irrational. But everyone needs a caress, even chatGPT, even me.

themarginalian.org

3 Kinds of Loneliness and 4 Kinds of Forever

Everything of beauty and substance that we make — every poem, every painting, every friendship — is an outstretched hand reaching out from one loneliness to another, reaching into the mute mouth of forever for the vowels of a common language to howl our requiem for the evanescent now.