The Words That Broke Me

Life Can Be Great Again

There’s a particular kind of crisis that has nothing to do with circumstances.

I was living in the French Alps when it happened. A little house on a mountain. The kind of place that should, by any reasonable measure, have made life feel extraordinary. The kind of place people spend years trying to get to.

I opened a book and read a short sentence in the introduction.

Man is a thinking monkey.

The writer meant it lightly. A cheerful shorthand for what we are: animals who evolved the capacity for complex thought, wandering a universe that didn’t arrange itself for our benefit and doesn’t much notice our presence. Nothing malicious. Just honest.

And something in me collapsed…

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