“Things never go my way.”

“Something good will happen soon.”

“It always rains in London.”

“I will try my best.”

“No one taught me kindness.”

“When life gives you lemons…”

“It is not over yet.”

“The rich keep getting richer.”

Each of these sentences is more than a statement. Statements become opinions, opinions become beliefs, and beliefs become self-fulfilling. Self-perpetuating. All-consuming.

An entire world lies behind each of these lines. Lifetimes unfolding from just five words. If you can hide worldviews in such tiny fragments of language, what else might lie in its power?

Everything. The answer is everything.

Always choose your words wisely — for words become worlds, and we can only escape the pages of a dark book as long as we remember that we are the ones writing it.

Isn’t it amazing how, when you’re sick for a while, say with the flu, you immediately know when you’re over the hump? One morning, you’ll wake up with perfect conviction: “Yes! This is it! The life force has found me again!”

In fact, you’ll probably feel better than you felt before you got sick. You’ll be elated. You’ll want to rip out trees with your bare hands. While this exuberance is not entirely called for at this stage, it is merely nature’s pendulum swinging back to the other side of the spectrum.

If you think there’s nothing to look forward to when you’re ill, remember a past time when you reached that moment. When the spring came back to your step. No matter how bleak today might look, tomorrow can be a good day — and we can always count on the return of the swing.

I mean, what else are you gonna do? Lie down and wait? That’s a trap. That’s what fear wants you to be: Paralyzed. Staying in place, ruminating, commiserating, thinking about how you landed at rock bottom rather than working on climbing out of it.

In some years, you’ll feel like you can’t do anything wrong. Everyone will praise you at work. Your relationships will thrive. Money will seem to rain from the sky. In others, you won’t be able to catch a break. Your income will get cut in half or go much less far than it used to, your boss will yell at you all the time, and your best friend will move to another country.

No one wants to live through too many of those latter kind of years, but it is those years in which our character forms. “Happiness is good for the body, but sorrow strengthens the spirit,” Bruce Lee once wrote.

When life keeps going sideways, do your best to walk on straight. The wind may sway you from your path, slow you down, or even throw you in a ditch at times — but it still is just the wind, and you’ve got places to be.

At the beginning of what would turn out to be the most popular TED talk of all time, the late Sir Ken Robinson made a powerful assertion: “My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” What follows is a passionate, witty, inspiring 15-minute talk on how we’re training children out of their creativity instead of showing them how to use it, and what we must do to change that pattern.

While I don’t have a 15-minute talk up my sleeve, I would like to make a similar, though already often-quoted assertion: A mental illness is an injury like any other, the mental equivalent of a physical ailment, like, say, a broken leg, and we should treat it with the same status.

Treatment, in this case, refers to “societal” more so than “medical.” You can’t put a cast on someone’s brain, and the number and kind of pills will also be different. Some broken legs heal without surgery. Others need intervention. A pulled muscle needs less attention than a torn ligament. Clearly, the rainbow of mental illness is entitled to as many shades and colors as the broken bones category, and so what the therapists prescribe will vary a lot based on what we tell them and what symptoms we exhibit.

No, the treatment I’m asking for is the one that happens in the elevator going up to your office. It happens when someone introduces themselves at your book club or when you pass someone talking to themselves in the street. That’s the treatment we give to people struggling with mental disorders, and it’s important that both we and the victims can talk about it without squirming, without romanticizing, without condemning, and without slowly leaning back in our seat making a “coo-coo” noise in our heads.

“Oh, depression, that sucks. What kind of treatment are you getting for it? Did the doctors give you a timeline for when it should improve? Or are you still diagnosing causes?” Of course being bipolar is not like a broken leg. You know it. They know it. The doctors know it. But writing someone off permanently just because they have an illness we can’t see won’t just not help them heal as quickly as possible — it’s also flat out wrong.

I know it’s hard. It’s hard to know what to say, to find the line between respect and patronizing, to neither belittle nor blow out of proportion, but that’s exactly why it’s valuable (and usually appreciated) when we try our best to do it. That’s our duty. Having to deal with a mental disease is enough. Losing one’s societal footing because of it is entirely unnecessary — but it’s us, the friends, the families, the bystanders, who must make sure that doesn’t happen.

When you encounter mental illness, put on your hat of dry professionalism, even if you’re just an amateur. You can’t identify a broken leg based on crutches alone either, but when someone tells you they have one, you can ask simple, non-dramatizing questions.

It’ll take a lot more than one TED talk to change the cultural standing of mental illness, but if we each do our part, we can make the right treatment as widespread as literacy — and that feels at least as important as making sure our children don’t lose their sense of imagination as they grow up.

In what might be the most emotional scene of all four Sherlock seasons, Dr. John Watson confesses his failings to Sherlock and his wife, or rather, the ghost of his wife, who — spoilers — died protecting Sherlock.

Watson explains that, were it not for his late wife’s prompting, he never would have gotten Sherlock out of a recent, near-fatal quagmire. “That’s how this works. That’s what you’re missing.” Sherlock thinks Watson is “just a good man,” but as always, there is more to the story.

“She taught me to be the man she already thought I was,” Watson says. It is — or was — the presence of Mary that let John aspire to something higher. Not mere virtue or some moral code. Worse, he betrayed that presence, he admits: “I cheated on her. I cheated on you, Mary.” After meeting a woman on the bus, Watson spent his days and nights texting her, even while Mary took care of their little baby. It wasn’t a physical betrayal, but a betrayal nonetheless.

As soon as she hears about the texting, a smile flits across ghost-Mary’s face. She knows what’s coming. “I’m not the man you thought I was. I’m not that guy. I never could be. But that’s the point. That’s the whole point. Who you thought I was… is the man I want to be.”

Shaking her head while smiling in the “it’s about time” manner that seems to be accessible only to strong women with foolish husbands (which, some might say, are simply all women with husbands), Mary only needs one sentence, one final parting gift, to do what she’s always done: Spur on her husband to become a better version of himself. “Well then, John Watson,” she says, “get the hell on with it!”

And just like that, she is gone.

Esteemed psychologist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once gave a lesson to the Toronto Youth Corps in 1972. In it, he explains that he recently took up flying lessons, and his instructor told him that, when trying to fly east with a crosswind from the north, actually, you must fly northeast to reach your desired destination. If you don’t account for the wind, you’ll land lower on the map than you want to be.

“This also holds for man, I would say,” Frankl continues. “If we take man as he really is, we make him worse — but if we overestimate him…” To much laughter and applause, he reveals the full quote which, actually, goes back to Goethe: “If we take man as he is, we make him worse. But if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be.”

This maxim should mark the backdrop of all psychological and therapeutic activity, Frankl demands. It is also exactly the kind of support Mary is giving to Watson — perhaps in death even more so than in life.

There is nothing more powerful than knowing someone believes in you. This belief in others need not, no, must not, just occur between husbands and wives, between fathers and daughters, between mothers and sons. It is a driving force necessary and accessible to all, if only we choose to spread it.

It’s true that, the closer someone is to you, the more sway their belief in you will hold. But an updraft need not be strong to still go up. Even small words can show us the doors we already know we want to go through. Doors to virtue, resilience, and compassion. Doors that could otherwise easily have led us to folly, selfishness, and despair.

I don’t know who you are. But I know you are a good person. You’re trying your best to do your best, and if you keep aiming high, you’ll always land right where you’re supposed to be.

Now get the hell on with it!

There’s a new focus room at work. I love it. It’s explicitly dedicated to working in silence which, in a co-working space full of people stuck in all-day meetings, is a godsend for writers.

When I write something serious and challenging, I go to the focus room. When I want to think, I go to the focus room. And yet, I still don’t want to spend all my time at the focus room.

Noise is rarely a good thing, but for a certain type of work, the kind a bee might do, busily swerving from blossom to blossom, the right level of hum can work wonders. Why do people work in coffee shops? Why do tools like Noisli exist? Because sometimes, you want to know you’re not alone — and the business, the sound, the movement of those around you is the consistent feedback you need to stay consistent.

When I cold-pitch my book to journalists, I don’t need meditative silence. I need energy! Music. The clatter of other people typing. Who are they trying to convince? Regardless, I’m not the only one trying to change minds, and that keeps my mind on task.

Most of the time, noise is a distraction. A detour. A slowly unfolding poison. On just the right days, in just the right places, however, it can be a bed of flowers swaying in the wind — and if you’re a bee on those days, there’s nothing to do but to enjoy the sun and pollinate away.

Taking a field trip in the year 1389, Dream and his sister, Death, visit the White Horse tavern. Curious to observe the humans they otherwise so elegantly guide from behind the scenes, the pair overhears Robert “Hob” Gadling talking to his friends over some ale: “I’ve seen death. I lost half my village to the Black Death. I fought under Buckingham in Burgundy. I know what death is. Death is… stupid.”

And then, right under the nose of the very Death he mocks, Hob asserts a bold theory: “Nobody has to die. The only reason people die is because everyone does it. You all just go along with it. But not me. I’ve made up my mind: I’m not going to die.”

With every word, Death’s literal field day is turning into a figurative one, and she laughs almost as much as Hob’s friends, who try to convince him that death isn’t exactly optional. “You don’t know that!” Hob says. “I might get lucky. There’s always a first time.”

While Dream does not understand “how any sensible creature could crave an eternity of this,” he is happy to follow along with the experiment Death is willing to set up: Hob Gadling shall indeed not die, and he will meet Dream at the same inn every 100 years. The two agree, and in 1489, Dream finds a shocked Hob waiting for him, who nonetheless claims being alive this long has been “brilliant.”

By 1589, Hob has been knighted and made a great fortune, so of course, Dream finds him in high spirits. 100 years later, the wheels of luck have turned. Hob has lost his status, money, and, worst of all, his wife and son. He’s been down and out, hating every second of the last 80 years, and yet, when Dream asks him if he still wants to live, he only says: “Are you crazy? Death is a mug’s game. I’ve got so much to live for!”

Another 300 years later, the two get into a fight, and when Dream can’t make it to their scheduled meeting in 1989, Hob is, for the first time, seriously concerned. While it will take another 30 years for them to finally catch-up, when they eventually do, Dream apologizes for keeping his now-friend waiting and, after a good laugh and a beer, the two agree that Hob’s attitude is still the same: “I could do this forever.”

It’s a fun thought experiment, isn’t it? How long would you want to live? 500 years? 10,000? Forever?

“It’s all changing,” and that alone is fascinating, Hob says — that time referring to the invention of chimneys. “Your eyes aren’t watering all the time from the smoke!” A few centuries later, he claims safe streets and the wide availability of food are, “what I always dreamed heaven would be like.”

When would you have enough of observing the human story? Of getting to play in earth’s infinite sandbox? Would you be weary after a few generations of raising great-great-grandchildren? Or would you be more of a Hob, happy to do this forever?

Of course, unlike the fortunate Mr. Gadling, you and I will never get to discover our true, authentic answers to these questions. What we do know for sure, however — and if anything, Hob’s story reinforces this lesson — is that life is precious precisely because we don’t live forever.

And while he is enviable, there are some principles from which even Hob isn’t spared. Like the rule that you have to live your life one day and lesson at a time. At first, Hob is a sellsword, fighting for whoever will pay him the most coin. Later, he becomes a merchant and slave trader, but in time, he grows a conscience. At the time of their latest meeting, Dream sees a Hob vastly changed from the lowly bandit he initially came across. A man of morality, virtue, and principle. “Well, I may have learnt a bit from my mistakes,” Hob admits. “But that doesn’t seem to stop me from making them,” he adds with a smile.

Unfortunately or not, we don’t have many lifetimes to experience every tiny detail of the universe — but we also don’t need hundreds of years to grasp the most important parts. Gandhi understood a lot of them in just 78 years, and he managed to capture the essence of it all in a quote that you and I, but even a man like Hob, can aspire to live by — no matter for how long:

Today is an improvement over yesterday: I left the house. After realizing that, when you have a stomach bug, eating one of those fancy bowl dishes full of tuna, beans, rice, sweet potatoes, and about 80 other ingredients isn’t the best idea — no matter how healthy and tasty they usually are — I decided to get some good old pretzels from the bakery next door.

While I was ogling the display in the somewhat dizzy state one is constantly in when sick, I understood I had a choice: Get the regular, plain pretzels for 95 cents and add the butter myself, or pay a whopping 65 cents more to get them fully furnished with a nice heaping of golden taste-enhancer.

There was no reason why I couldn’t save the money. I have butter. I have a big knife with which to neatly slice pretzels in half. And I know perfectly well how to spread butter on a pretzel. And yet…

Maybe it was the sickness. Maybe it was laziness. Maybe it was the worry that I’d cut my finger, or that I wouldn’t manage to make a pretzel as nicely prepared as the ones right in front of me. Regardless, I walked out of that bakery with two buttered pretzels. Total extra damage: 1 Euro and 30 cents.

Sometimes, you just have to treat yourself. Whether it’s as a relief from pain or as a reward for doing well doesn’t matter. There are days when 65 cents more for a little bit of butter are totally worth it, and on those days, you should spend and don’t look back. You just have to know which ones they are.

When Musashi Miyamoto wrote The Book of Five Rings in 1645, an instruction manual on the art of swordsmanship, after 30 years of rigorous training and reflection, at the end of each subsection, around every 50 words, he issued a reminder to the reader: “This should be given careful consideration.”

Time and again, Musashi cautions those eager to learn, prompting them that the words must be thought upon, and the actions must be practiced. At first, I thought, “Isn’t that obvious?” But apparently, even in 1645, a time when, at least during the brief periods of peace, there was little else to do but read and think, people still needed reminding.

In today’s ever-distractive world, of course, those reminders seem more than appropriate. You can’t grasp a sentence like the following by casually skimming it once: “The mind is not dragged by the body, the body is not dragged by the mind.” Nor can you master the skill of “being aware of opponents’ swords and yet not look at the opponents’ swords at all” without some serious hours of training. “This takes work,” Musashi wrote.

The world now offers us more ways and sources of learning than ever, but the fact that few methods are worth teaching — and few teachers worth learning from — remains the same. Often, we’d be better off studying the right few sources in great detail, meditating on them deeply and repeatedly, turning to them again and again when new situations call for it, rather than chasing one new quick-fix, band-aid, latest-podcast-book-video-approved-by-society’s-latest-starlets every time we encounter a new dilemma.

Learning is like swordsmanship: You can pick up a new weapon each week and never master any of them, or you can wield the same reliable tool over and over again, thus turning it into your irreplaceable, ever-dependable companion.

Make room for some novelty, sure, but most of the time, stick to a small, curated selection of the mentors that work for you. It might feel limiting at first, but in time, you’ll see that in reinterpreting their seeming rigidity, you’ll find all the flexibility you need.

When he presents Bilbo Baggins as the 14th member of the dwarf company hoping to reclaim their home — the mountain Erebor — from the claws of a gold-hoarding dragon, Gandalf faces much resistance. The dwarves don’t think Bilbo’s up to the task. He can’t fight. He can’t fend for himself in the wild. He’s not even a dwarf!

Eventually, however, Gandalf slams his fist on the table and settles the debate once and for all, particularly pointing out one quality: “Hobbits are remarkably light on their feet. In fact, they can pass unseen by most, if they choose.”

As it turns out, the traits that initially make him such an unexpected choice for a journey like this will eventually be the ones allowing Bilbo to most aid, sometimes even save, his company. Most of all the fact that, most of the time, no one cares about a hobbit passing by.

The point for you and I is that it’s okay to be a hobbit. To most people, you always will be. You’ll go unnoticed, and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s how we manage to live in a world too vast to comprehend.

Imagine you had to be involved in every situation of everyone you’re even vaguely familiar with. Whenever your neighbor comes home, they’ll keep you busy for ten minutes. As soon as you leave your house, a crowd of people follows you around. Doesn’t that sound exhausting?

Going unnoticed is freedom, not misery. You don’t have to be an elf, constantly glowing, commanding the full attention of every room you enter. You’ll be much happier being a hobbit, minding your own business, going about your day as you please while doing the best you can.

And if you ever feel discouraged, remember that even Gandalf, who already believed in the power of hobbits, thought their lightness was far from the end of their potential: “You can learn all that there
is to know about their ways in a month, and yet, after a hundred years, they can still surprise you. Hobbits are amazing creatures.”