Electing a new pope is never easy, but in the movie Conclave, it appears to be impossible. The voting rounds of over 100 cardinals, locked away behind closed doors, are plagued by sexual scandals, bribery, and even Muslim acts of terror.

One by one, initially favored candidates fade away, and it all plays into the hands of the ultraconservative cardinal Goffredo Tedesco. At one point, he claims the papacy should go to someone “who fights these animals.” For the first time, a quiet cardinal who arrived only at the last minute raises his voice.

Vincent Benitez, who spent his ministry in the Congo, Baghdad, and Kabul, calls Tedesco out: “When you say we have to fight, what is it you think we’re fighting?” The real battle lies “inside each and every one of us,” Benitez explains. Having watched the conclave play out from the sidelines, his main observation is that “these last few days we have shown ourselves to be small, petty men, concerned only with ourselves, with Rome, with these elections, with power.”

“But things are not the Church,” Benitez continues. “The Church is not tradition. The Church is not the past. The Church is what we do next.”

A long silence follows. No one wants to admit it yet, but Benitez’ words left their mark. And by the next morning, when every cardinal holds yet another slip of paper in their hand, they still don’t all agree, but they have learned one lesson: Electing a new pope is not impossible, but it will take a lot of humility, working together, and, as all good things that come out of the Church, faith to get it done.

What struck me most about Benitez’ speech, however, is that you could replace the word “Church” not only with just about any other organization, but even with the word “life,” and it’d still make perfect sense. We are not our lowest common denominator. We are not our greatest fear. And we are definitely not who we were yesterday. Whatever obstacle will drop into your path today, remember: Life is not how we got here. Life is what we do next.

Five years after my last one, I bought a new iPhone. I wasn’t overly excited. There were three reasons.

First, unlike my past devices, which all disintegrated after three years, this one still worked rather well. I only got the replacement so I could use the old one as a separate phone for my new job. It’s a decent reason to get a new phone but not a great one.

Second, I try to use my phone as little as possible. So when I do, it’s mostly sending messages, calling people, and browsing the web. The improved camera quality is always nice, but given how little of their potential I tend to unlock, new phones are often wasted on someone like me.

Third, and this is the most deliberate, cultivated reason I wasn’t too excited, I knew the phone would fall again. Just like my old one eventually dropped and got its first scratches, this one, too, would one day end up dented. As the zen story goes, “the cup is already broken.” Enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t get attached to it.

There is, however, one emotion I tried to lean into when buying my new phone: gratitude. I was grateful that I could buy an expensive phone without having to worry about the money too much—even if it was for an only-okay reason, if I wouldn’t end up using it all that much, if it would one day scratch and break just like my last one did.

I still remember the first time my old phone fell. I had placed it onto my wallet at a restaurant table, and because of its smooth surface, it slid right down and off the side. There’s always a bit of melancholy when the first blemish appears, but perhaps that’s also why we call things “broken in”—now, they have fully arrived in our lives. One day, they’ll break entirely, but for now, the phase of real usefulness has begun.

Enjoy your shiny objects, but remember: The phone will fall again, and that’s perfectly okay.

At one point in To Kill a Mockingbird, a dog with rabies slowly walks up to the house of our hero family, the Finches. After housekeeper Calpurnia promptly drags the kids, who discovered the threat, off the street, she calls for their dad, Atticus, to come home.

Soon, Atticus returns with the sheriff in tow, and the two wait for the doomed animal to come within shooting range. As soon as it does, Atticus prompts the sheriff to take the shot, but the latter refuses. To the surprise of everyone watching, he hands the gun to Atticus. “Mr. Finch, this is a one-shot job,” he says. Atticus claims he hasn’t fired a gun in 30 years, and the two go back and forth on who should do what’s necessary. Until, eventually, the sheriff just blares out: “For God’s sake, Mr. Finch, look where he is! Miss and you’ll go straight into the Radley house! I can’t shoot that well and you know it!”

Reluctantly, Atticus takes the rifle. The nearly 50-year-old lawyer walks into the middle of the street, takes off his glasses, whips up the gun to his shoulder in one swift motion, and before the mad dog can look around twice, he drops dead on the street. Within seconds, everyone is sad but safe.

Later in the day, the kids Jem and Scout, who’ve never seen their dad do anything remarkable, are still shocked at Atticus’ hidden talent. They discuss it with Miss Maudie, a neighbor, and she explains how, even as a boy, “One-Shot Finch” was “the deadest shot in Maycomb County.” As the kids remain incredulous as to why Atticus would never have told him about his skill, she even leaves them with a useful bit of advice: “People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

During the 2024 Olympics, the Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikeç went viral for his casual attire and pose while firing his pistol with one hand. At nearly 52 years old, he was even older than Atticus, and—after winning the Silver medal—Turkey’s oldest Olympic medalist. He kind of appeared out of nowhere, and back to nowhere he went right after. He, too, was a humble shooter—and whether he read the book or not, he sure seems to have heeded Miss Maudie’s advice.

Shoot the mad dog if you have to, but remember: “People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

Arcane is a critically acclaimed, animated TV series set in the League of Legends universe. Two sisters represent two warring factions of what is, essentially, the same city. Except overground, Piltover houses the rich in shiny houses and a prosperous environment, whereas underground, Zaun is marked by a lack of infrastructure—and thus a public struggling with crime and drugs.

Towards the end of the show, after each side and sister have had the upper hand more than once, Jinx, the younger of the two, finally finds herself in a Piltover prison cell. If only in her mind, her deceased mentor Silco appears with a last bit of advice on how everyone might finally see some peace: “Killing is a cycle. We build our own prisons. Bars forged of oaths, codes, commitments. Walls of self-doubt and accepted limitation. We inhabit these cells, these identities, and call them ‘us.'”

What the ghost from Jinx’s past is hinting at is that each battle only lasts as long as both sides are willing to show up for it—and that willingness usually comes from desperately wanting to prove a point about who we are. “I thought I could break free by eliminating those I deemed my jailors,” he continues. “But…Jinx…I think the cycle only ends when you find the will to walk away.”

Walking away is often a good option when it’s painless. Sometimes even when the cost is great. But how do you do it? Silco offers an interesting blueprint: You just let go of that part of your identity. Yesterday, you were a soldier—but yesterday is dead, and so today is as good a day as any to be a doctor, artist, or father instead. If you can see identity as a mirage, a cathedral made of nothing but water, you’re free to dissolve every individual part of yours—even the one you held on to so desperately until only minutes ago.

In the show, while Jinx hears her mentor’s words, she interprets them in the most dramatic of ways. Eventually, it’ll take someone else sacrificing a part of their identity to save her. But in the end, just like the creators of Arcane decided to call it quits after two monumental seasons, maybe this is one of the noblest reasons of all to walk away.

Yesterday, I showed my fiancée a bratwurst stall that I used to go to as a child when we went shopping in a certain town. Fresh rolls, lightly charred sausages—still a classic! After the salesman handed over the goods, I looked around for ketchup and mustard. I conveniently found them beside the stall.

The dispenser was about one meter tall and, as it turned out, offered mustard, ketchup, and mayo to choose from. What was special about this one, however, was that you dosed the amount of sauce with your foot. Genius! Instead of wrestling with sausage rolls and napkins, and getting yourself dirty in the process, you just hold your hot dog up to the nozzle, tap a button on the floor, and voilà! The perfect line of mustard with zero hassle.

There was just one problem with this brilliant construction: People didn’t recognize it. Shortly after us, another couple stepped up and stood puzzled in front of the dispenser. “You have to use your foot,” I explained. “Ah, thanks,” the man said. Once they knew how it worked, they, too, thought it was a rather clever way to offer condiments.

As the couple stood eating, discussing the dispenser, more people walked up. They tried squeezing the nozzles at the top directly to little effect, until the guy who I had just helped paid it forward: “You have to use your foot.” “Ah, thanks,” came the response. He looked at me and laughed. “I guess that’s the circle of life,” I said.

After we all went our way, I kept wondering how many people misunderstood the dispenser each day. How many times someone says, “You have to use your foot.” And for how long this cycle will continue. Probably forever. And while this very much is the circle of life, I did realize something else: That circle is a circle of teaching. It’s not just life and death, death and life. The old caring for the young until it’s the youngs’ turn to care for the old. It’s also a matter of you teaching me, me teaching him, him teaching her, and then her teaching you.

Never stop learning—but don’t forget to teach, too. Even if all you’ll do is teach a stranger how to use the ketchup dispenser, you never know how far each lesson will go.

Modern books are often littered with testimonials. My copy of Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse needs just one: “There are only few books which transform us, which give us courage to change our lives,” French writer Frederic Beigbeder says on the back cover. “Der Steppenwolf is one such book.”

Since I already loved Siddhartha, maybe I’m just a sucker for Hesse, but when it comes to Steppenwolf, transform me it did. And while it sure gave me courage to change like Beigbeder suggests, perhaps even more importantly, it gave me permission to do so.

This novel about a depressed, torn man who rediscovers the joy of living is many things, but to me, first and foremost, it’s an exploration of identity.

Harry Haller starts out on the verge of suicide. He is deeply dissatisfied with life itself and his own in particular. Only once he meets the chirpy but mysterious Hermine, a woman who seems to live life to the fullest yet still be aware of all its existential conundrums, does he begin to change his point of view. Harry finally learns to dance. He attends night clubs and events and rediscovers the other sex. Many of his experiences end up being surreal. As a reader, you won’t know what was real and what wasn’t until the very end—but by the final pages, you’ll understand: Life is about laughter more so than about delivering a neatly compressible image of yourself to everyone else.

The book addresses the theme of identity head on more than once, one of the more memorable instances being that, and I’m paraphrasing, “while science insists we present only one orderly self to the public, actually, we each hold many selves within us.” By his friends and mentors throughout the book, Harry is encouraged to let go of the civil self he clings to so desperately yet so unhappily, and once he does, he finds the freedom to reinvent himself at any moment rather enjoyable.

I’m not sure the book’s powerful illustration of this journey can be made colorful any other way than by reading the book itself, and while I’d like to try my hand at that some other time, for now, know the book’s central theme is that identity is a meme—and far from our best one.

I’ve thought about, written about, and tracked this phenomenon in the arts for a long time. It appears in the penultimate episode of Arcane. The Bourne movies are all over it. Jim Carrey is a remarkable example of someone who got the joke. Time and again, I encounter books, TV shows, and people who ask an innocent yet profound question: Who are we—and why does that seem so important to begin with?

It took me five years of writing to fully claim the identity of “being a writer.” After five more years of feeling much more comfortable in my own skin, I concluded that “your identity is a cathedral made out of water.” It looks much more precious than it is. If you dare—if someone gives you permission—you can snap your fingers and, swoosh, the whole thing collapses into a teacup. Then, you can start over, and while some towers will take time to build, some labels take a while to claim, you’ll be able to raise other new structures as quickly as you crushed the old ones.

If you feel stuck in any way, shape, or form, read Der Steppenwolf. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do it justice in my own words, but perhaps all I need is to echo Frederic Beigbeder’s: There are only few books which transform us, which give us both courage and permission to change our lives. Der Steppenwolf is one such book.

On yesterday’s train, a teacher sat across my table. He was grading a history exam. The students’ longhand writing and little notes he left reminded me of my time in school.

At one point, he moved from one exam to the next, and the style of paper changed. So far, all of the students’ answers had been written on lined paper, but this one had used graph paper instead. “Wait, that’s for math,” my fiancée said. “Why would someone write a history exam on math paper?”

As with many a realization whose depth we don’t recognize at the time that we have it, I just shrugged and said: “I guess they can choose whichever paper they want.”

Now, having dwelled a little more on my own school days, I believe I, too, was free to pick my own paper. Rule-loving creature that I am, I don’t recall ever completing a written exam on graph paper, but in theory, I could have. Mostly, however, the whole incident reminded me of how many freedoms we had in German high school in the early 2000s. There were no school uniforms. Everyone had their own backpack. We doodled on our pencil cases and our homework books. We wore crazy hairstyles. And we left copious notes in our textbooks. All of that was freedom. All of it helped us become more of who we were meant to be as individuals.

You may not have grown up in the most liberal of educational circumstances. But whether you did, didn’t, or did but were socialized out of making the most of them, remember: Life sets exams for all of us, but you can pick your own paper. You can put an essay on quad paper, do calculations on ruled sheets, or draw a perfect rectangle on a blank page—and though it may not feel like the most empowering act of defiance, writing on graph paper sure counts for a start.

Cool-headed as she is, Scout Finch cannot escape every trap life sets for any child growing up with a four years older brother. By the time Jem hits sixth grade, he actually gets interested in what school has to offer. Unfortunately for Scout, whatever he learns he blows out of proportion when relaying it to her.

Did she know the Egyptians walked with one arm to the front, the other to the back? Or that they invented toilet paper? That they were smarter than Americans in South Alabama ever could be? But whenever Jem’s phantasms spin around Scout’s head a little too fast, she can recall a piece of advice from her father Atticus, a line that deserves recognition well beyond the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird: “Delete the adjectives, and you’ll have the facts.”

As imaginative as Jem—and most other people, for that matter–might be, he is also lazy. It’s much easier to make a real history lesson seem larger than it was than to invent one from scratch. Therefore, though it might not get Scout the whole truth, removing all judgments is a good start. And guess what? The approach to discernment that worked well for rural Alabamians 90 years ago has lost none of its shine today. If anything, clickbait headlines, impulsive tweets, and unchecked modern-day gossip have probably made it all the more warranted.

Whether it’s your older brother, a news outlet, or a not-so-rigorous friend: Delete the adjectives, get the facts—and then slowly accumulate the truth from there.

In the video game Crisis Core, one of the main characters, Genesis, is obsessed with a poem titled Loveless. Thanks to the developers’ creative efforts, the five-act ballad is a full-fledged piece of art, both in English and Japanese, and it has been featured in Final Fantasy game releases spanning almost 30 years.

Whereas most of those games turn Loveless into a small easter egg, however, in Crisis Core, Genesis insists on bending the entire storyline to fit his favorite poem’s narrative. Three friends, a goddess bearing a mysterious gift, estrangement, strife, and sacrifice: Loveless has it all. So when Genesis’ original plan to cure his genetic disease fails, he figures why not turn himself into a tragic hero?

As he recites line after line from Loveless every time you encounter him, Genesis sure has an idea of how he’d like things to go. For him. For you. For both of your childhood friends. But even in his determination, he admits he doesn’t truly know which role he will play. Will it be the hero? The prisoner? The lost friend to make a last-minute return? It seems Genesis almost doesn’t mind.

In the end, Genesis won’t become the hero he wishes to be. Yet, somehow, he’ll still see most of Loveless enacted in a way that makes him proud to have been part of “the production.” And as fans and players try to decipher the poem’s real meaning, perhaps it issues one reminder to us above all: It’s okay to write a script for your life—and even if you don’t get to be the protagonist, it can still be worth the while. After all, if the play is great, what does it matter which role you’ll portray?

“Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return,” some of Loveless‘ final lines read. So if your current performance does not have a happy ending, remember the parts that deserve your gratitude—and then whip out your pen and write the next lyric.

Last summer, I went for a hike. At the top of the mountain, there was the obligatory hut for rest and nourishment, but also a tiny chapel. I went inside and, on the left-hand wall, there was a wooden box. Kind of like a picture frame, but deeper, and with a simple pane of glass to protect its contents.

Inside the box, several small, two-page flyers adorned the backside of this construction. 19, in fact. Each of them was held up by a pin, clearly visible to any chapel visitor, and each flyer came with the same elements: a name, a photograph, a line of poetry or a Bible verse, and two dates. Born. Died. 19 times. 19 people. 19 destinies in one wooden box.

Sometimes the picture was in color; sometimes it was black-and-white. Sometimes the gap between the two dates was large; at other times it was rather small. 84 years. 63 years. 41 years. 34 years. 17 years. Some of the flyers had a mountain on them, signifying the person had died during a climb. Others showed a firefighter in gear, a man in his garden, a young girl taking a selfie.

It was a somber moment. One minute you’re enjoying the sun on a hike, the next you stumble into death. But it was also beautiful. A miniature shrine which made it easy to linger. To pause for a few minutes and pay respects—to people I never knew, but all of whom were loved by someone. Someone who made that flyer, ventured up the mountain, and pinned it to this wooden box.

It seems we all end up in one of those one way or another. It could be a large one, a small one, or one framed with glass in a small chapel in the middle of nowhere. But a wooden box it shall be regardless. Taking a beat in front of the ones we’re not in isn’t the only way to celebrate life while we have it, yet there are worse places to start.

Inhale esprit, exhale mountain air and memories. Do it every day. Collect moments, and respect those before and around you. That way, whichever wooden box you’ll land in, you won’t be alone—and whoever comes to say hello will feel your energy long after you can no longer shake their hand.