Читать книгу Drowning in the Shallows - Dan Kaufman - Страница 4

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But what if you’re sceptical?

Step onto my balcony between 9:40 and 10 at night and you’ll usually see my pasty neighbour posing in front of his mirror. He’ll flex his biceps, suck in his gut, check himself out from different angles. Why he does this naked, the window completely open, I’ll never know: maybe he likes neighbours watching; maybe he thinks he’s a stud.

Two windows across, the flicker of his neighbour’s TV dances on a painted-pink wall. You can’t see the image but you can always hear it – they’re fond of home renovation shows.

Step back into my lounge room, past my snarling cat, makeshift milk-crate bookshelf that makes me look stable, through the hallway, past my mould-encrusted bathroom, over the dirty laundry sprawled on my stained bedroom carpet and to the window, and you can peer into another neighbour’s life, if you can call it that, as he’s hunched over his computer at all hours of the day and night, studying or working for god knows what while silhouetted by the dark.

We shouldn’t be trying so hard.

Bookstores are groaning with the weight of self-help books telling us to be better, to be more.

What if the opposite is the case?

I’m going to stop trying to be more, and instead be less.

That might be my forte.