Epicurus saw human needs as divisible into three categories, and Schopenhauer clarifies Epicurus’s classifications: Natural and necessary needs – which cause pain if not satisfied. Essentially food and clothing, which are easy to satisfy. Natural but unnecessary needs – such as sexual satisfaction – which are more difficult to satisfy. Neither natu

we try to avoid the intimidating responsibility of having to decide what to do with our finite time by telling ourselves that we don’t get to choose at all – that we must get married, or remain in a soul-destroying job, or anything else, simply because it’s the done thing.

We can ask ourselves the poignant autobiographical question: what sort of person might I have been had I had the opportunity to do something else? There will be parts of us that we’ve had to kill (perhaps rather brutally) or that lie in shadow, twitching occasionally on late Sunday afternoons. Contained within other career paths are other plausible