The Comfort Book - Matt Haig Page 0,8

painful. She had no food now. She felt weary and in a dream-like state. Yet she had a determination she believed was passed down from her father: “ ‘When we have really resolved to achieve something,’ my father once said, ‘we succeed. We only have to want it, Juliane.’ ”

She stayed on the lookout for jungle paths, found one, and then followed it. It led her to a deserted hut that had a liter of petrol outside. She had also been taught that in an emergency petrol can be a (painful) remedy for severely infected wounds, so she used it to dress her own injury.

Eventually, on the eleventh day, she heard human voices and the jungle-dwelling men who found her took her on a long boat trip back to civilization. The day after her rescue she was reunited with her father.

Koepcke’s story would eventually be the subject of the Werner Herzog–directed documentary Wings of Hope, Herzog himself having originally been an intended passenger on the ill-fated plane. Juliane graduated in biology and kept the family tradition of zoology alive, as she is currently the librarian at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich.

Of course, it is unlikely we will find ourselves in the middle of the Amazon stranded after a plane crash. But when we find ourselves lost and stranded in the tangled forests of our own lives we can still get to know the territory. And face up to our wounds and be aware of the metaphorical snakes in the undergrowth, not hindered by ignorance or denial, but armed with self-awareness.

Minds and windows

Self-awareness can be hard. Your mind is not always to be trusted. It sometimes lies, or plays tricks, or doesn’t give you the full picture. It can convince you that you are terrible.

A mind is real as a mind in the same way a window is real as a window. But that doesn’t mean the view you see through the window is the full view. Sometimes the glass is dirty, or clouded, or rain-specked, and sometimes the view is obscured by a big lorry that has parked right in front of it. The window could also be entirely misleading. For instance, if your only view was through a red stained-glass window you might perceive the world to be as red and forbidding as a Martian desert. Even if there was nothing out there but lush green fields.

A paradox

A therapist once told me that the most common complaint he heard from his patients was the feeling that they didn’t belong. The feeling of being an imposter, or of being outside things, of not fitting in. Of failing to connect easily with people. I found this as reassuring as it was paradoxical. That one of the most common feelings among people was the feeling of not fitting in among people. The comfort, then, is the weird truth that in one sense we have most in common with others when we feel awkward and alone. Isolation is as universal as it gets.

Crossroads

Sometimes when we have a decision to make, we feel we need to be fast. Indeed, the word “decisive” is often used as a synonym of fast. But when we find ourselves at a crossroads it is often better to stop, wait a while at the lights and check the map. After all, movement isn’t progress if we are heading in the wrong direction.

Happiness

Happiness occurs when you forget who you’re expected to be. And what you’re expected to do. Happiness is an accident of self-acceptance. It’s the warm breeze you feel when you open the door to who you are.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

Helen Keller, We Bereaved

One beautiful thing

Experience one beautiful thing a day. However small. However trivial. Read a poem. Play a favorite song. Laugh with a friend. Gaze at the sky just before the sun’s final tumble toward night. Watch a classic movie. Eat a slice of lemon drizzle cake. Whatever. Just give yourself one simple reminder that the world is full of wonders. Even if we are at a point in life where we can’t appreciate things, it sometimes helps to remember there are things in this world to enjoy, when we are ready.

Growth

We grow through hard times. Growth is change. And when everything is easy, we have no reason to change. The most painful moments in life expand us. And