It isn’t hard to sell people on optimism, but it’s hard to keep them sold on it, especially in a cynical year.

What I really want to do is say that life is impossible, and the lie we tell ourselves is that it is too short. Life, if anything, is too long. We accumulate too much along the way. Too many heartbreaks, too many funerals, too many physical setbacks. It’s a miracle any of us survive at all.

And maybe this is what it’s like to live in these times: the happiness is fleeting, and so we search for more while the world burns around us.

perhaps life is too short for fear. There is always going to be something outside, waiting to kill us all.

To attack the innocent where they feel most secure is cowardly, of course, but it is also a reminder. There is no safety from this. There will be no reprieve from the sickness that spreads and calls people to take up this level of violence. There will be no calm before the storm. There will only be the storm, and then another, louder storm. It will

The feeling I love most is walking into night air after spending hours cloaked in sweat, dancing in a small room with strangers. If the night air is cool, the way it sits on your skin is a type of forgiveness. A balm for all of the heat you’ve leaned into. Sometimes, I think I still only go to shows for the way it feels to leave them, everyone

Plus, all of our pals got drink tickets but only about half of them could drink, and so, in half-full venues full of our friends, we could live like brief and generous kings.

there are people we need so much that we can’t imagine turning away from them. People we’ve built entire homes inside of ourselves for, that cannot stand empty. People we still find a way to make magic with, even when the lights flicker, and the love runs entirely out.

Their question is often posed as How will I explain this person in the bathroom to my child? or How will I explain those two people kissing to my child? but rarely How will I explain to my child that people die and we do nothing?