The Wonderfully Complicated Business of Living With Other People

Nobody is straightforward. Not the difficult one at the back, not the saint on the front row, not you, and certainly not me. That is not a design fault. It is the material we have been given to work with.

Much of what passes for wisdom about relationships is really a wish for simpler people. Communities that flourish tend to give up that wish early and get on with the actual work: staying curious, repairing quickly, and assuming complexity rather than resenting it.

Restoration is unglamorous. It looks like a second conversation nobody wanted to have. It is, I think, the most human thing we do.