Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.