Life is perhaps after all simply this thing and then the next.

We are all of us improvising.

We find a careful balance only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness

or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction.

We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way that is perculiar and inexplicable.

We are constanly adjusting, making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be

and where to go next.

We work it out, how to be happy,

but sooner or later comes a change-

sometimes something small, sometimes everything at once-

and we have to start over again,

feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment.

— Anne Giardini, The Sad Truth About Happinesses