Part I
Inner Life
Understand yourself
Read the first essayIn this part: Inner Life
- Why We Spend So Much Time Trying to Understand Other People13 min
- Why We Take Other People’s Behaviour Personally15 min
- Why Thoughtful People Overthink Decisions14 min
- Being Useful Is Not the Same as Being Known12 min
- Why Awkwardness Is Usually Smaller Than Regret11 min
- I Thought I Had Invented Something5 min
- The Circumstances We Did Not Choose9 min
- What Hunger Taught Me About Other People’s Choices9 min
- A Decision Is Rarely Made From One Thing8 min
- The Things I Notice Before Anyone Says Them9 min
- Small Steps Towards the Kitchen3 min
- I Had Only Come to Look at Rims6 min
About this part
What happens between an experience and the meaning I give it? In these essays I follow the wish to understand other people, the decisions I keep reopening, and the ways usefulness or approval can begin to feel like a condition of belonging.
Alongside those reflections are memories of childhood: hunger, fear, an unexpected discovery and small steps towards a kitchen. I return to what I remember without pretending that I understood it then as I understand it now. The child’s curiosity belongs in the account as much as the adult’s recognition of what was missing.
These pieces ask how earlier circumstances meet the present without explaining every part of it. A feeling can deserve attention while an interpretation still needs checking. Understanding more can give me room to decide what I carry forward, what I need from other people, and what remains uncertain.
Understanding our interpretations helps us ask a more concrete question of a relationship: what makes honesty and ordinary uncertainty safe enough to live with?
Continue to Part II