neither here nor there

“I wish I knew what to do with my life, what to do with my heart…I do nothing all day, boredom settles in, I look at the sky so I get to feel even smaller than I already feel and my mind keeps poisoning itself uselessly.”

Attempting to understand how song birds learn to sing, [an ornithologist] brought them up in isolation. To his surprise they produced a kind of a song - not species perfect - but recognizable. He then introduced them to the songs of a variety of birds not of their species and discovered they chose the notes and cadences that, combined with their own attempts, completed their species song. ‘Of course!’ I thought, 'that is what poets do.We have a song - of a kind. But it is not until we have heard many other songs that we are able to put together our own specific song.’

I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.

The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mysterious glue that enables millions of humans to cooperate effectively. This mysterious glue is made of stories, not genes. We cooperate effectively with strangers because we believe in things like gods, nations, money and human rights. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money and no human rights—except in the common imagination of human beings.