When your blog has a following of millions, you get a lot of advice. I think that is probably true because even I get some advice. Why are you always so negative? Why must you sneer at people with whom you disagree? You should try being helpful once in a while. Well, here goes.
I sometimes pick up from the shelf one of John Updike's collections of criticism. My object is usually to see what he has to say about some book or author I've been reading. What usually happens is that, studying the table of contents, or the index, my eye falls on something that seems at least as interesting as what I was searching for, so I turn to that page instead, and I'm off, somewhat in the manner of a more up-to-date person surfing the Web, until a couple of hours later I'm still immersed in the book, my original mission long forgotten.
So a couple of days ago I'm rooting around in More Matter and I come to a reminiscence concerning William Maxwell, editor of The New Yorker at the time Updike graduated from Harvard in 1954. He (Updike) was on his way to England to study drawing, but he had had, as he says, "a poem or two and a short story" accepted by the magazine and so was invited for a visit with the editor before departing. By that time the magazine had been the object of his intense admiration for several years, and he was so bedazzled (his word) to be in the office, speaking with the editor, that later the only thing he could remember of the interview was Maxwell saying, in response to a fear Updike expressed concerning his trip: "People imagine that losing their luggage is like death, but it isn't."
Losing your luggage is just one item on the list of things that seem worse than they are. Probably only death is like death. So buck up. Whatever ails you is probably not that bad. The earth will continue to rotate and revolve, as it has for more than 4.5 billion years, which is more than ten thousand times longer than human beings have been having bad days. It is half a paradox, but still true, that accepting your unimportance might result in a sunnier disposition.
