How do you convince someone to change, to stop being afraid of himself? How do you convince yourself not to be so scared all the time?

At some point in your life, this statement will be true: tomorrow you will lose everything forever.

You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits. Gross, right? A bloody pulpy liquid mess. Look at it, try to make sense of it. Realize you can't. Because there is no sense. Ask your computer to print out a list of every lie you have ever told. Ask yourself how much of the universe you have ever really seen. Look in the mirror. Are you sure you're you? Are you sure you didn't slip out of yourself in the middle of the night, and someone else slipped into you, without you or you or any of you even noticing?

Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it.

There is a sense in which I am pretty sure this makes no sense. I don't know where this is going. I don't know how it ends.

Sometimes when I'm brushing my teeth, I'll look at the mirror and I swear my reflection seems kind of disappointed. I realized a couple of years ago that not only am I not super-skilled at anything, I'm not even particularly good at being myself.

How do you convince someone to change, to stop being afraid of himself? How do you convince yourself not to be so scared all the time?