How to Talk About the Positive Side of Openness and Kindness

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i'm one of those people who, if i'm happy and things are going well, i start spouting the new age verities. If i'm being grouchy or something's gone wrong in my life, then i'm like, yaya, shut up. You be open better. So i struggle with that. Wh what does that look like? What doyou mean? I think most of us live by trying to be decent. And so at some point i start to feel like, wha, how weird is it that i don't talk about that stuff, you know?

George Saunders is the author of eleven books. His latest is A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life.

”I really have so much affection for being alive. I really enjoy it. And yet, I’m a little negative minded in a lot of ways too, like I really think things tend to be fucked up. ... To get that on the page—to sufficiently praise the loveliness of the world without being a sap, and also lacerate the world for being so goddamn mean—to do those in the same story would be a great aspiration. And I haven’t gotten there yet.”

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