Who are the loveliest people in the world? They’re not the famous ones or the respected ones, the worthy ones and the powerful ones. They’re the ones you haven’t really heard of who long ago shed their pride, who can tell you frankly, how lonely and sad they are? Who can face their self hatred and accept their regrets? They aren’t just unhappy. There are plenty of boring and frightening ways to be that they’ve come to an optimal perspective on their unhappiness. You could tell them about the strangest, oddest, most lamentable things about you and know that they understood it all at once from the inside. They aren’t remotely attached to seeming sane. They long ago ceased attempting to appear normal. They know that life is mostly pain, mystery and error, and they’ll never try to persuade you otherwise. They will never be so mean as to try to cheer you up. They don’t give a jot about your reputation because they know enough about what people in general are like. They’ve gone into the weirdest bits of themselves and will therefore understand the oddest bits about you. These are the sort of people you want in the prison cell or on the way to the scaffold, in the trenches or in the bed next to you on the cancer ward. These are the kinds of people we need so many more of in our lives and should try so hard to be for others.