Amy Life

And maybe I needed the break. Maybe after years of pressure and burnout and noise, I earned a little numbness. But no one warns you how easy it is to slip from rest into rot.

Tim: I think optimism is the expectation that things are going to be OK. That we’re going to get a good outcome. Hope is much more about meaning; hope is the will to hold on to our values in the face of difficulty. Optimism is one kind of hope, a rather flimsy sort of hope. What we need now is a more resilient kind of hope, one not based on an

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Optimism arrives pre-determined, just like pessimism. It requires no effort, no risk; it simply is. Hope, on the other hand, must be reached for. It is in tomorrow and the next day, ‘a confidence that one’s project will prevail’.

So why don’t people talk more? Epley continued his research and came up with an answer to the mystery: We don’t start conversations because we’re bad at predicting how much we’ll enjoy them. We underestimate how much others want to talk; we underestimate how much we will learn; we underestimate how quickly other people will want to go deep and get

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To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness.

The perfect combination of realism and hope. Let’s call it gratitude.

Or they hit you with a smug “It depends.” Which is meant to sound nuanced and intellectual but is actually the “Go girl, give us nothing!” of conversation.