Wellness

Elizabeth called this phenomenon the “meaning effect,” a term she much preferred to “placebo effect.” Because to say that these effects arose from placebo implied that they arose from nothing—for that’s what placebo traditionally was, an inert substance, literally and intentionally useless—when in fact the placebo effect was elicited by the strong

certainty was just a story the mind created to defend itself against the pain of living. Which meant, almost by definition, that certainty was a way to avoid living. You could choose to be certain, or you could choose to be alive. And the only thing she was certain of was this: that between ourselves and the world are a million stories, and if we d

you were just another cog, just the smallest possible pinion in the engine of global progress, one of mass culture’s million tiny underwriters, dispersing risk.” “And how was I doing that, exactly?” “It was your whole starving artist ethos, that whole rebel-without-a-cause motif. Back then, we really believed that the worst person in the entire sou

Someday, he thought, he’ll have digested enough Derrida, and he’ll have read all the right books, and heard all the right music, and watched all the right films, and seen all the right art, and through a kind of inner alchemy he’ll find himself being exactly who he right now hoped to become: publicly recognized, shown in galleries, reviewed ecstati

Elizabeth had never once set foot in Park Shore, Illinois, and when she’d first asked Benjamin what the place was like, he’d described it as “the confluence of real estate’s three magic l’s.” “And what are the three magic l’s?” she’d asked. “Liberal, leafy, and loaded.”

Elizabeth realized she needed to take the entire conversation-entering process that she had intuitively perfected all those times she was the new kid in school and break it down for Toby into manageable, followable micro-steps (honestly this was pretty fun for her; behavioral psychologists tend to love their flowcharts). The first step was Observe,

It was the ritual that was important—the acupuncturist’s thorough examination, the couple’s elaborate date, the mother’s comforting home remedy, the ceremonial mixing of the absinthe. It was in these observances that the placebo effect activated and materialized: the transubstantiation of belief into reality, of story into truth, a metaphor made fl

This is what it felt like to not belong: the anxiety, the constant low-level wariness, trying to avoid that shame Jack felt when it was revealed to him that he’d been doing something horribly crude, or thinking something horribly shallow. Like this photograph, which was apparently perpetuating violent American dominance, and here he’d thought it wa

Turns out, if all your companionship and social capital derives from being an important artist, it is frightfully easy to decide that you are one.

“You know, when I was young,” Jack said, “none of my friends wanted corporate sponsorship.” “Why?” “They called it selling out. It meant you were fake.” Toby snorted. “That’s dumb.” “You think so?” “It doesn’t mean you’re fake. It means you’re good.”