Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke But it does mean our attitudes and approaches to our own mind change and often improve via sticking around long enough to gain the perspective despair and fear refuse to give. That doesn’t mean time dissolves all mental health issues. Time showed me that the things depression imagined for me were fallacies, not prophecies.

Time disproves the lies depression tells. I didn’t realize that there is something bigger than depression, and that thing is time. Valleyīecause I didn’t really understand how I fell into suicidal depression, I imagined I would never find my way out. Our mind might make prisons, but it also gives us keys. It also empowers us, because we aren’t at the mercy of the world we can never control, we are at the mercy of a mind we can, potentially, with effort and determination, begin to alter and expand. It’s not always easy, sure, but there is a comfort in knowing it is possible to view any single thing in multiple ways. It is ultimately up to us how we greet these things. They only gain positive or negative value the moment they enter our minds. Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, thought that if we are distressed about something external, “the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Nothing either good or badĮxternal events are neutral. 'Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.' - James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room Power But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard. It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learned while we are at our lowest.

Note: The following are excerpts from The Comfort Book by Matt Haig. If you enjoy this summary, please consider buying me a coffee to caffeinate my reading sessions. īuy The Comfort Book: Print | Kindle | Audiobook Learn more about The Comfort Book on Amazon.

The comfort book review