I have a shower mat. My girlfriend laughs at me for it. It makes me look like an 80-year-old man. Why would a perfectly healthy guy put a rubber mat down every time he showers? The answer is that I slipped more than once — and I don’t intend to fall.

There’s a lot of stuff you can land on in my bathroom. The sink. The toilet. The floor. None of it will provide a soft landing, and if you’re unlucky, you’ll make the “dumbest ways to die” list the next day.

My grandpa is an 80-year-old man. In fact, he’ll turn 82 in a few days. Not too long ago, he did fall in the shower, and the bruises were neither fun to look at nor quick to heal. It was the last warning shot I needed — and so I bought a shower mat.

Life pulls the rug from under our feet often enough. We don’t always get fair warning, let alone multiple ones, and yet when we do, we usually ignore them. We keep barreling down the slope on our skateboard, thinking we’re invincible. A helmet? Knee pads? Those are for suckers! Sure they are. Until the wheels catch a tiny stone, and we get the flying lesson we never asked for.

If fortune is generous enough to let you slip before you fall, don’t take it for granted. Heed that warning. Buy the anti-slip socks, the helmet, or the flowers that let your girlfriend know you love her. Life has given you a chance to prevent unnecessary disaster, and it is your duty to take it — if not to protect others, then at least to save your own neck.

Slip once, buy a shower mat, phew. Slip twice, fall, that’s on you. May you never hit the dirt.

Society is far too accommodating for humanity’s countless addictions. Just because over a billion people drink two cups of coffee a day does not make it normal to not be able to function without your 8 AM cup of joe — but in the affluent countries where 50, 60, 75% of people drink coffee on a daily basis, it can seem weirder to skip it than to sip it.

Different addictions become socialized in different geographies. A friend from Brazil once told me that in South America, everyone is extra-addicted to their phone, particularly Instagram, and therefore obsessed with their looks. In Bavaria, annual beer consumption averages out to half a liter per person per day. Take out the non-drinkers and more casual consumers, and you’re left with a lot of alcoholics, no matter how high-functioning they may be.

Germans have endless jokes about beer bellies, relationship bellies, and traveling salesman bellies not because those bellies are normal but because two thirds of men and more than half of women are overweight — and about a quarter of adults is outright obese. Common is not “normal.” We apply that word to whatever we frequently see, and we use it to make ourselves feel better about what’s really an untenable situation.

The next time someone tells you something is “normal,” ask yourself: “Yes, but is it natural?” Our ancestors didn’t have a flat rate for soy milk lattes, and they got out of bed just fine. Beauty wasn’t a contest but an indicator of natural selection, and alcohol, like other high-calorie foods, was a rare indulgence.

This isn’t to say we can’t enjoy today’s abundance of these goods, but we must not pretend that depending on them is healthy, even warranted. Skip your coffee for a day. Quit drinking for a month. Look around your town, your office, your country, and dare to question the masses.

There’s a difference between what’s common and what’s natural, and we ought to remember it.

Yesterday, I stood in front of Picasso’s Woman With a Violin. No matter how long I stared, I could barely make out the instrument among the sea of cubes, let alone the woman. Eventually, I snapped a photo of the painting, then moved on.

Back home, I went through my pictures, and lo and behold: From the more distant perspective, both the woman and violin were perfectly clear.

Sometimes, we’re too close to something to see the beauty that’s in it. A tired waiter might miss the deep gratitude resting in a customer’s smile. A frustrated parent may forget how far her daughter has come. And an art dealer doing too many transactions may no longer be able to spot what’s special about a painting.

That’s life. It happens. We all get too deep into the weeds from time to time. But when we realize it, we can also take a step back. Get the distance we need, be it in time or in space, to once again see what the (big) picture is truly about.

You’re not a cynic, unappreciated, or incompetent. Try again tomorrow. Pick a different angle. Chances are, you’re just standing too close to the art.

If your work involves manual labor, you are transforming physical reality. Pause for a second, and realize how profound this is. Carving a chair out of wood, assembling metal sheets into a car, operating a machine that turns sand into glass bottles — manufacturing is nothing short of alchemy. Back in the Middle Ages, kings dreamed about converting lead into gold, but what we have accomplished is a thousand times better.

If your work mainly consists of thinking, you too perform alchemy, just a slightly different kind. Instead of transmuting the materials already present in our physical realm, you are bringing new ones into it. You are chiseling knowledge, ideas, and emotions out of the fabric of space — and that, too, is an awe-inspiring task.

Science tells us space is empty, but that is not true. After all, everything that exists came out of space. Earth. Other planets. Donuts. Skyscrapers. Even humans — you and I — are rearranged stardust. In that sense, sculpting a little more stuff out of ether should seem as natural to us as fetching water from a spring.

If you imagine this “life force,” this basic, cosmic soup, as something a little more tangible than air, a translucent, smoky substance perhaps, or invisible, rainbow-colored cotton candy, your work will begin feeling less abstract and more meaningful. You also won’t be alone.

In Star Wars, they call it “the Force.” In Final Fantasy VII, they call it “the lifestream.” Even the Stoics had a word for it: “Logos” — the divine yet perfectly natural “anima mundi,” the soul or spirit of the world. The ancient philosophers thought this “operative principle” of life to be invisible yet ever-present, elusive yet palpable, and they wholeheartedly believed it was forever driven forward by virtue and purpose.

The lifestream is more than destiny. It is not a predetermined future, but the raw material from which we create it. Whether we shape our contribution with our hands or our mind, we are drawing from the same source, and that source wants goodness — in creation, in history, in us — to prevail.

Every day, we collectively carve tomorrow out of the cosmos, and in this grand scheme of creation, smiling at a young child while picking up her family’s trash is as important as discovering the next cancer therapy that wins a Nobel Prize.

You are here for a reason. You may not always get to choose what you do, but rest assured that, no matter the task in front of you, that reason is always intact.

Your work matters. Thank you for giving it all you’ve got.

I planned a weekend trip to a nearby lake. Then, the weather forecast said it would rain. On the day of, the skies were cloudy, but the rain was a long time coming.

Instead of grabbing my bag and going, I waited. I knew it would come, just not when. An hour went by, then three, then five. In the afternoon, the sun even poked its head through the clouds. Preposterous!

But eventually, at 9 PM or so, the skies opened, and torrential rain poured down. Finally! It kept raining for the rest of the weekend. My trip would have to happen another day.

Sometimes, all you can do is wait for the rain. Maybe the rain is an email. Or a rejection letter. Or news from the doc. Whatever shape your weather blockade takes, it doesn’t mean your delay is dead time. You can still fill those hours. Carpe diem — seize the day!

I read while I waited. Rested. Called my mom. Had a schnitzel. Bought some bread. Even went outside. It wasn’t the trip I had planned, but maybe it was the trip that I needed. Forced breaks are an opportunity to reflect on your pacing. Are you going too fast? Too slow? How can you make the wait time well spent?

We can’t always avoid the rain, but even when the downpour is inevitable, we can still choose how we spend our time. Life never “waits” in the sense that it stops altogether — and neither should we.

A friend of mine is grieving the sudden loss of his dad. He’s not okay, and everyone knows it, but as his friends, we still want to check in on him.

How do you know when you’re a welcome distraction vs. when you’re just more noise someone doesn’t need? You don’t — but you can ask. So I told him: “I hope you’re doing okay, but really, I hope you’re just doing. I’m happy to chat anytime if you want, but if you’re not ready, I’m happy to leave you alone too.”

Sometimes, it’s enough to let someone know you’re glad they’re coping any way whichever. You don’t have to pretend everything is fine so they can do the same. You can admit that it sucks, but at least you’re still both around, still friends, together waiting for the suck to end.

Most of the time, it’s great to be optimistic. But every now and then, the going gets so tough, reality will just have to do as it is. So while I do hope that you too are doing great, well, or okay, for today, I’ll be more than satisfied if you’re doing at all — and it truly is okay if the only thing you expect of yourself is the same.

The little red panda runs to his tortoise mentor: “Master! Master! I have very bad news!”

Calm as ever, Oogway answers: “Ahh, Shifu. There is just news! There is no good or bad.”

After Shifu relays his message — a dangerous leopard warrior has escaped from his high-security prison — the Master concedes: “That is bad news…if you do not believe that the Dragon Warrior can stop him.”

To everyone but the Master, the situation seems hopeless. The enemy has great power. The Dragon Warrior isn’t a warrior at all — just a chubby panda who makes noodles for a living (and eats twice as much as he sells).

But Master Oogway remains unfazed, for he already knows what viewers of Kung Fu Panda are yet to learn: Everything is relative. There is no yin without its yang, and the end result is always balance.

Bad news are just bad if you believe nothing good can ever come from them — and today, like every day, it is a little too soon to tell. Trust the scale to even out. Have faith, and eventually, the Dragon Warrior will come. Sooner or later, the dark will find its light.

I know it’s not easy. On some days, the current of judgement will be too strong. But even when it carries you away, you can always get out of the water. Climb back ashore, and remember: There is just news. There is no good or bad.

And when you’re sitting on dry land again, no matter how wet you might be, you may even recall Master Oogway’s last words: “You must believe.”

In the movie The Adjustment Bureau, a team of mysterious agents tries to prevent Matt Damon’s character David from being together with the love of his life. The agents have a book describing “the Plan,” the grand, cosmic scheme of things, supposedly written by God himself. According to this plan, disaster will ensue for David, his love Elise, and the entire world should the two be together.

Ironically, the agents use doors to keep closing gates for David. By wearing special hats, the agents can use any door to teleport to another location, thus thwarting David’s every move in trying to reach Elise. If fate has ever slammed the door in your face, you know what it feels like to have the Adjustment Bureau on your heels.

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us,” Hellen Keller once wrote. While forcing us to leave something behind, every door also leads to a new place. In David’s case, he would become the most powerful man in the world, and Elise’s future looks more than bright without him too. And yet…

“We never know what is on the other side of the door,” Matt Haig writes in The Comfort Book. “It may be a room similar to the one we are standing in, or it might be a room we have never seen before. It might not be a room at all. But we can never be sure.” That’s why doors are scary. We can’t see what we’re about to gain. All we know is what we’re giving up.

Sometimes, we look around the room we’re so familiar with, and we hesitate. We take our hand off the handle. “Do I really need to open this one? What if it’s Pandora’s box?” At other times, particularly those when we did find a wasteland rather than an oasis after taking our latest portal, we desperately cling to the handle of a door that’s long been closed. We rattle and shake and hit our flat hand against the wood, all to no avail. Like David, desperately trying to find his way back to Elise.

But was that door ever really locked? Haig believes few endings mean something is actually over: “Even though I have largely recovered from depression, the door is never quite closed.” It is “always slightly ajar,” he writes. Some doors are revolving. They transport us into the unfamiliar, but they still allow us to return. Sometimes, they even painfully try to pull us back.

Every ending contains a new beginning, because there are neither endings nor beginnings. Only doors. “Everything in front of us is defined by possibility,” Haig says. “And even if we end up somewhere we don’t want to be,” we should remember that “another door exists. And another beautiful handle, waiting to be turned.”

I don’t know if the Adjustment Bureau will breathe down your neck today. I don’t know where your next door will lead. All I know is that it is neither the end nor the beginning. It is a door to the future — and the only way to find out what’s behind it is to step through.

Maybe not today, but in the long run, it definitely will. I’m not talking about a specific instance here. “I was so sure we’d win the game, but the rain made it impossible to cover any ground with those new shoes we’d just bought.” That happens all the time.

What I want you to consider is your belief in the concepts of optimism and fate themselves. Let’s say you don’t believe in fate. The cosmos is full of randomness and indifference.

If you’re also an optimist, you’ll constantly expect chance to pleasantly surprise you, and you’ll work hard towards giving it as many opportunities as you can. If you’re a pessimist, however, everything you do will feel just as meaningless as random particles colliding in the cold darkness of space. Why do anything? It’ll all amount to nothing anyway.

Now, let’s assume you believe very strongly in fate. Everything is preordained, and there’s no way we can escape fortune’s grasp.

What would an optimist do under such circumstances? They would take pride in their accomplishments but never claim all the credit. After all, it was mostly fate! Similarly, they’d be unfazed by setbacks and forever look towards the next thing destiny might have in store for them. “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be today. Let’s see if fortune likes me better tomorrow!” A pessimist, on the other hand, would see doom and gloom wherever they turn. They’d expect the apocalypse to occur any minute, and they’d be convinced karma is out to get them every time they forget their keys.

Do you see it? How much you believe in fate pales in comparison to whether you choose a positive or negative outlook on life! Fate and chaos are the two extreme yet equally resigned ends of the free will–spectrum. If you think there’s even a slight chance we exist in-between, in the grey space where we control some things but not all, you’re also giving yourself room to choose hope.

Whether we are an optimist or a pessimist determines our life strategies and tactics much more so than free will, so if you at all believe you can, please, choose hopefulness. On some days, looking forward to the future will be the most important thing we do — let’s not leave it up to chance.

Yesterday, I had a bad customer experience. Instead of the declared maximum of 55 minutes, my food took over 90 minutes to arrive. There was no way to contact the driver. The restaurant didn’t pick up the phone. Two customer service agents did…nothing. In fact, one of them casually canceled my order just before the food arrived. Miraculously, it showed up anyway. Free meal after all, I guess?

I don’t know why I got so worked up about it. I wasn’t all that hungry. There was no need to call and chat and pull all these levers to try and salvage the situation. I could have just waited, or cancelled, or made some food at home. But maybe I wanted to get worked up about something. Maybe I just felt like shouting. That’s the problem with anger: You rarely know whether it’s warranted, and even if it is, it is almost never productive.

As a writer, it is especially tempting to turn each perceived slight into a long rant lamenting an entire industry. I’ve recently noticed a huge drop in quality for the experience of flying. I have a 1,400-word piece sitting in my drafts folder, ready to go — but I think I’ll just hold on to it. Besides riling up other people, is it really going to change anything? Will it reach that 1 in 1,000 airline execs who’d really take it to heart?

Writers publishing a constant stream of doomer pieces often tell themselves they’re bringing attention to important issues. Actually, they just stir up thousands of people’s emotions, and they usually profit off the outrage. The issue itself almost always remains. Like anger itself, ranting in public is rarely productive.

In private? Have at it. Write that hot letter. Type that angry Slack message. Just pause for a moment before you hit send. Chances are, you’ll realize some words are better left unsaid.

Releasing your pain is important, but it is much better to scream into, or at, your pillow than in someone else’s ear. As with your memories of bad customer experiences, most of the time, the best thing you can do with your rants is shelve them.