“It appears that almost everything one does to gain a livelihood or for pleasure is fattening, immoral, illegal, or, even worse, carcinogenic.”
Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease
Interesting how there are two common variants of posts like this:
1. Woman inadvertently Pavlovs man into sexual obsession with fragrance (see below).
2. Man inadvertently instills trauma response in woman with fragrance (the fragrance in question usually being Dior Sauvage).
I repeat, you do NOT need self-help books. You need to get lost in immortal works of fiction.
You need to read 'The Brothers Karamazov' and slowly realize that each brother lives inside your own heart.
You need to witness how each of them wrestles with passion and hatred and guilt.
You need to wrestle with faith and doubt, love and resentment, freedom and duty. Then you must come to terms with the tension of these within you — with your own contradictions and shortcomings.
Great fiction will expand your capacity to see the world in its full complexity. You'll see that truth is often found not in the extremes, but in the tension between the extremes.
The questions that truly matter will not be solved by "self-help" or productivity hacks. These questions can never be finally "solved" by your own force of will or rational understanding.
Great fiction will help you battle for your soul.
Over a year ago, a Dutch frog science magazine emailed me asking if they could include my comic in their upcoming dart frog issue. They interviewed the scientist who first described the blue poison dart frog; he had seen/liked the comic. They sent me a copy, which just arrived: