Sheila Heti

People born from these three different eggs will never completely understand each other. They will always think that those born from a different egg have their priorities all wrong

Nothing makes a person feel like their life’s work—or their self—is less seen than when it’s being judged by someone from a different egg

But is that even possible—for an artist to shape their impulse into a form which is not, in the end, an art form?

The heart of the artist is a little bit hollow. The bones of the artist are a little bit hollow. The brain of the artist is a little bit hollow. But this allows them to fly. Those who aren’t hatched from the bird egg might wonder why it was birds—who centre their thoughts on their own selves—who were born to give the
world its metaphors, pictures and stories. Why should it have been given to the birds?

A bird can learn to walk on the ground like a bear, and they can spend their whole life walking—but they will never be happy this way. While a fish on the shore gasps for breath, desperate to get back to the sea.

Her flowers make us think of the flowers in the soul of the person who put them there. It is the flowers in the soul of the person who put them there that make us happy and enliven our hearts. The beauty of the flowers is a clue to the beauty of a human heart. They are a keyhole into a human heart.

And what opens one heart opens many.

She felt so alone in those days. Not that she minded. It is only when you get older that everyone makes you feel bad about being alone, or implies that spending time with other people is somehow better, because it proves you to be likeable.

But being unlikeable wasn’t the reason she was alone. She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living

There were so many ways of being hated, and one could be hated by so many people. In the beginning, we were so innocent of this fact—of how much we could be hated, by people we thought would like us, or by people we thought wouldn’t care. But there was so much more hate than any of us had the capacity to understand. Hate seemed to spring from the deepest core of our beings.

. It seemed that rage was what we were made of.

And why not? Happiness was not meant to be ours. The love we imagined would never be ours. Work that could occupy our hearts and minds forever—this also was not meant to be ours. We would never make the money we hoped we would make. Nothing would be as we hoped it would be, here in the first draft of existence. People were finally beginning to catch on. Our rage made perfect sense.

At least God had given the sunrise—to those of us who lived on a cliff. At least he had given us a bit of love—if not enough to see us through to the end of our lives. Here in the first draft of existence, we crafted our own second drafts—stories and books and movies and plays—polishing our stones
to show God and each other what we wanted the next draft to be, comforting ourselves with our visions. On good days, we acknowledged that God had done pretty well: he had given us life, and had filled in most of the blanks of existence, except for the blank in the heart.