The Meaning of Life: The true ingredients of fulfilment

Through teamwork, our egoism is submerged within a bigger loyalty: we are held together by a shared goal that everyone knows they could never accomplish in isolation.

A radical editing of our true selves is the price we must pay for conviviality.

What separates a good day from a bad one is not necessarily that we have been without stress or have returned home early. It is that we have derived a tangible impression of having made a difference to the lives of others. It turns out that it is simply not enough to make only ourselves happy.

makes work authentic is the deeply individual fit between the nature of our role and our own aptitudes and sources of pleasure.

We do not all fall in love with the same people because we are not all missing the same things. The aspects that we find desirable in our partners speak of what we admire but do not have secure possession of in ourselves.

Acceptance is at the centre of the kinds of experiences we collectively refer to as ‘getting turned on’.

The mutual permission involved in sex is dramatic and at the core of our desire. We’re implicitly saying to another person through our unclothing that they have been placed in a tiny, intensely policed, category of people; that we have granted them an extraordinary privilege.

Sex delivers a major psychological thrill. A lot of our delight has its origin in the idea of being allowed to do a very private thing to and with another person. Another person’s body is usually a highly protected and private zone. It would be deeply offensive to go up to a stranger and finger their cheeks or touch them between their legs.