we can deal only with what’s in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next. At some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again.

The things that trouble us now will one day be past history.

remember that our present will one day become a past, and our future will be our present.

Nature shows that survival is a practice. Sometimes it flourishes—lays on fat, garlands itself in leaves, makes abundant honey—and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living. It doesn’t do this once, resentfully, assuming that one day it will get things right and everything will smooth out. It winters in cycles,

When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favoured child: with kindness and love.

After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that something is going wrong. If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt.

I’m beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured.

The subtext of these messages is clear: Misery is not an option. We must carry on looking jolly for the sake of the crowd. While we may no longer see depression as a failure, we expect you to spin it into something meaningful pretty quick. And if you can’t pull that off, then you’d better disappear from view for a while. You’re dragging down the vi

Change will not stop happening. The only part we can control is our response.