A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor: A Novel (The Carls Book 2)

I was supposed to be a voice of reason, but being reasonable was quickly going out of style.

You might think that I missed a big one, like “Belonging.” But I think belonging is just mutual appreciation of shared identity. It’s like a feedback loop of appreciating someone for an identity you share, which makes you appreciate yourself.

Last August, the Carls disappeared, and we have, for the most part, attempted to pretend that they never happened. But if you think things have gone badly in the past year, I have bad news. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

felt the kind of rage where you really aren’t in control anymore, when your animal instincts tie together with your human emotions and words become wild and uncontrollable weapons.

I realize now that power you can’t control isn’t power at all.

Step One: Understand Your Problem. A surprising number of people skip this step, thinking they know what the problem is when actually they don’t. This is something you actually have to think about.

“All of this will make you less able to handle unlikely but ultimately inevitable catastrophes. Especially if they compound. A war on top of an unstable climate on top of a pandemic, for example.”

“I guess we’re at the point in history where being a person has become a liability. Better to just be a disembodied jumble of ideas.”

“But you’re right. People will just share the things that confirm their ideology, and those things will always exist. Our reality isn’t about what’s real, it’s about what we pay attention to.”