Be cautious when you’re comparing yourself to others. You’re a singular being, once you’re an adult. You have your own particular, specific problems—financial, intimate, psychological, and otherwise.

What you aim at determines what you see.

Anxiety and depression cannot be easily treated if the sufferer has unpredictable daily routines.

No matter how good you are at something, or how you rank your accomplishments, there is someone out there who makes you look incompetent.

people need ordering principles, and that chaos otherwise beckons. We require rules, standards, values—alone and together. We’re pack animals, beasts of burden. We must bear a load, to justify our miserable existence. We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we

And, above all, don’t lie.

Aristotle defined the virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life.

at least become aware of) what would really justify your life.

The scientific world of matter can be reduced, in some sense, to its fundamental constituent elements: molecules, atoms, even quarks. However, the world of experience has primal constituents, as well. These are the necessary elements whose interactions define drama and fiction. One of these is chaos. Another is order. The third (as there are three)