The School of Life

Once viewed as a kind of long dream that meant nothing and could be forgotten about as soon as it was over, childhood is now conceived of as a momentously consequential period in which the entire emotional disposition of a person will be formed and their chances of a mentally healthy life determined.

We start to appreciate that our career analysis is going to take time, that it has many stages, that the reach for an immediate answer can backfire – and that it is a strangely magnificent, delicate and noble task to work out what one should most justly do with one’s brief time on Earth.

ou get a thrill out of guessing correctly what other people require – though it’s not just guesswork, of course, it’s because you’re always on the lookout for little revealing signals that people don’t even know they are sending. You love profit because it is, in many ways, an achievement of psychology: the reward for correctly guessing the needs of others ahead of the competition.