Philosophy books

Next time you hear that an apparently perfect marriage between two perfectly well-matched partners is on the rocks, don't be too surprised. It's a clear case of set-up overestima-tion. Frankly, anyone who's spent more than five minutes in a relationship should already know that without ongoing fine-tuning and repairs, it doesn't work. All partnerships have to be consistently nurtured. The most common misunderstanding I encounter is that the good life is a stable state or condi-tion. Wrong. The good life is only achieved through constant readjustment.

When we fall short, when we are revealed as the fundamentally flawed, vulnerable, beatable, screwed-up people we are? It can be hard to get going again. If we're too hard on ourselves, we'll knock ourselves out… out of the fight entirely. We are all going to screw up. We're going to relapse-on the diet, on the bad habit, whatever. We're going to blow it in public. We are going to lose. Nobody stays undefeated for long in this life. And then what? Can we gather ourselves back up? Can we regroup and try again?