
It means entering into relationships without a list of qualifications or expectations, especially around how we anticipate our partner “making us happy” or, equally, how we strive to “make them happy.” It’s simply being happy together, while fully understanding that it is not our partner’s job to make us happy — or ours theirs.
“I find that the remedy which works for me is, from the outset, to purchase my freedom at the cheapest price I can get; I know that I have by this means escaped much travail and hardship. With very little effort I stop the first movement of my emotions, giving up whatever begins to weigh on me before it bears me off. If you do not stop the start, you will never stop the race. If you cannot slam the door against your emotions you will never chase them out once they have got i…
… like mental masturbation: just putting labels on people and on overlapping sets of vague symptoms. The fact that a single mental patient, when visited by five psychologists, will walk away with six diagnoses, is sufficient proof that psychology is more an art than a science. In the midst of all this, my first computer science class was a revelation.