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Life is much harder if we’re convinced it shouldn't be. Pain comes to us all, but it lands much harder when we think of it as something we shouldn’t ever experience, and not simply as life’s “cost of doing business”. The reason for this lies
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We often downplay our capacity for evil. We do it every time we explain people doing terrible things by insisting they must be ignorant, mentally ill or subhuman. And it's understandable: the darker parts of ourselves are—well, dark. Easier to turn away than face that head-on. But
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When I teach medical students on psychiatry posting I emphasise how important it is to avoid words that convey a dim view of patients. It goes back to a consultant’s advice during my own training. Consider the difference between: She claimed she hadn’t been using substances recently. She
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When you're on the inside, it's easy to think of diversity as mainly for the benefit of the "other people"—you know, so "they" get a chance to be in the room where it happens. That's a mistake. Diversity is
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I recently read a well-intended but naive suggestion: that people should explain their cultures to others new to it. If I’ve learned anything moving to the UK, it’s that none of us really knows our cultures. Not from inside. It takes someone breaking our cultural rules for us
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Or, the danger of trying to be Harper Lee Harper Lee did what many creatives dream of—she threw all her energy into one work of genius: To Kill a Mockingbird. As strategies go, it's a recipe for disaster. Not just because chances are very slim that you