Yet fear is what makes us feel most alive. Familiarity breeds comfort, the Unknown breeds doubt. Will this be your last sunset? Will you ever eat ice cream again? Will you ever feel again the way he makes you feel right now? The uncertainty keep us on the rim, sharp, living in suspense, at the edge of possibility.

We all want what we can’t have. In fact, most of the time we only want things because they are unavailable or forbidden. To justify the purchase, we convince ourselves that what we want so desperately is also what we need. The trouble is impulse purchases can often lead to an expensive case of buyer’s remorse.

Some people think everything they do is great and that they always look fabulous, even if they don’t. They have this ability to be a cheerleader for themselves, even if they’re on a losing team. Narcissists trade reality for fantasy. Rather than displaying a dysfunctional personality disorder, however, they are the ones who have it all figured out. The only world that matters is the one you create, the one you choose to live in.

Trapped in your own head, without an exit strategy, conflicted by doubt and with only your obsessions to guide you, reality takes a backseat to anxiety, changing shape faster than a Coney Island contortionist. You’ll soon realize that the worst place to be lost is in your own head.

Trust is not given. In any relationship, it is the hardest thing to earn and the easiest to lose. In fact, the only words harsher than “I don’t love you anymore” are “I don’t trust you anymore.” The former has everything to do with someone else. There is nothing you can do about a change of heart. The latter has everything to do with you.

Whenever students meet their untimely demise in a horrible accident, from a random act of violence or a rare untreatable disease, they are instantly elevated by teachers, friends, and family into prized pupils, filled with promise- whether they actually were or not. They aren’t remembered as a busload of mediocre students who perish in a crash, but are magically transformed instead into upstanding honor roll students in death. We need lost lives to have meaning. It’s a comforting delusion, really. Like dead-spin. Unfortunately, you aren’t around to appreciate it.

Minding other people’s business, transforming their problems into entertainment for ourselves and basically cheating them out of their own tragedies. We devour horrible and intimate details ravenously like baby birds at feeding time, only rarely connecting the unfortunate dots that bring the bigger, sadder picture into view.