Ellie McConnell’s Reviews > The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves > Status Update

“I wasn’t aware that I felt people were fundamentally fault-finding, that my idea of a person is of someone who wants to scold me. I just thought people were that way.”

“If you’re frightened of being criticized you’re probably pretty critical.”

“It turned out there was no grand trauma behind my feelings of depression and isolation. What there was, was my incessant scrutinizing, my calibrating myself to fit in with others.”

“All of our thinking about other people’s desires is assumption.”

On the violent, abused boy who spits:
“Thomas and I were at an impasse because neither of us could beat the thought that he was irreparably damaged. And it was only when we were both able to be sad, to despair because we couldn’t fix what was broken, that his spitting stopped serving a purpose for us and we were able to move forward.”

“Psychoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we’re going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we’re creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.”

In the chapter on the girl who hopes the noncommittal man will change & avoids grief:
“You’re so caught up in your future that you don’t feel upset about how your life is now, in the present.”
“Breaking up means giving up not only their present, but the future they’d dreamed of.”

On the boring guy:
“When I spoke to him about what was happening in his life, his response was to look back, avoiding how he felt or what he thought now.”

“Graham’s being boring was aggressive — it was a way of controlling, and excluding, others: a way of being seen, but not seeing. It also protected him from having to live in the present, from having to acknowledge what was happening in the room.”

“We can take on a catastrophe to stop ourselves feeling and thinking — and to avoid responsibility for our own intimate acts of destruction.”

“Consciously, Sarah wanted to meet someone and fall in love, but unconsciously, there was another story. At this deeper level, love meant losing herself, her work, her friends; it meant being emptied out, neglected and possessed.”

“She was involuntarily negative because emotional surrender and attachment represented a loss. Her negativity was a reaction to her real feelings — to the prospect of love.”

“We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we're stepping into before we exit the old one. We don't want an exit if we don't know exactly where it is going to take us, even - or perhaps especially - in an emergency.”