Coda WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MY NEWFOUND PEN OF LIGHT? In late 2016 I travelled to northern California to meet a friend and business associate. We spent an evening together thinking and talking. At one pointhe took a pen from his jacket and took a few notes.

RULE 12 PET A CAT WHEN YOU ENCOUNTER ONE ON THE STREET DOGS ARE OK TOO I am going to start this chapter by stating directly that I own a dog, an American Eskimo, one of the many variants of the basic spitz type.

RULE 11 DO NOT BOTHER CHILDREN WHEN THEY ARE SKATEBOARDING DANGER AND MASTERY There was a time when kids skateboarded on the west side of Sidney Smith Hall, at the University of Toronto, where I work. Sometimes I stood there and watched them. There are rough, wide, shallow concrete steps there, leading up from the street to the front entrance, accompanied by tubular iron handrails, about two and a half inches in diameter and twenty feet long. The crazy kids, almost always boys, would pull back about fifteen yards from the top of the steps.

RULE 10 BE PRECISE IN YOUR SPEECH WHY IS MY LAPTOP OBSOLETE? What do you see, when you look at a computer—at your own laptop, more precisely? You see a flat, thin, grey-and-black box. Less evidently, you see something to type on and look at. Nonetheless, even with the second perceptions included,what are you seeing is hardly the computer at all. That grey and black box happens to be a computer right now, right here and now, and maybe even an expensive computer.

RULE 9 ASSUME THAT THE PERSON YOU ARE LISTENING TO MIGHT KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T NOT ADVICE Psychotherapy is not advice. Advice is what you get when the person you’re talking with about something horrible and complicated wishes you would just shut up and go away. Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence.

RULE 8 TELL THE TRUTH—OR, AT LEAST, DON’T LIE TRUTH IN NO-MAN’S-LAND I trained to become a clinical psychologist at McGill University, in Montreal. While doing so, I sometimes met my classmates on the grounds of Montreal’s Douglas Hospital, where we had our first direct experiences with the mentally ill.

RULE 7 PURSUE WHAT IS MEANINGFUL (NOT WHAT IS EXPEDIENT) GET WHILE THE GETTING’S GOOD Life is suffering. That’s clear. There is no more basic, irrefutable truth. It’s basically what God tells Adam and Eve, immediately before he kicks them out of Paradise. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

RULE 6 SET YOUR HOUSE IN PERFECT ORDER BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE THE WORLD A RELIGIOUS PROBLEM It does not seem reasonable to describe the young man who shot twenty children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 as a religious person. This is equally true for the Colorado theatre gunman and the Columbine High School killers.

RULE 5 DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN DO ANYTHING THAT MAKES YOU DISLIKE THEM ACTUALLY, IT’S NOT OK Recently, I watched a three-year-old boy trail his mother and father slowly through a crowded airport. He was screaming violently at five-second intervals—and, more important, he was doing it voluntarily. He wasn’t at the end of this tether.

RULE 4 COMPARE YOURSELF TO WHO YOU WERE YESTERDAY, NOT TO WHO SOMEONE ELSE IS TODAY THE INTERNAL CRITIC It was easier for people to be good at something when more of us lived in small, rural communities. Someone could be homecoming queen. Someone else could be spelling-bee champ, math whiz or basketball star. There were only one or two mechanics and a couple of teachers. In each of their domains, these local heroes had the opportunity to enjoy the serotonin-fuelled confidence of the victor. It may be for that reason that people who were born in small towns are statistically overrepresented among the eminent.

RULE 3 MAKE FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE WHO WANT THE BEST FOR YOU THE OLD HOMETOWN

RULE 2 TREAT YOURSELF LIKE SOMEONE YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR HELPING WHY WON’T YOU JUST TAKE YOUR DAMN PILLS? Imagine that a hundred people are prescribed a drug. Consider what happens next. One- third of them won’t fill the prescription. 30 Half of the remaining sixty-seven will fill it, but won’t take the medication correctly. They’ll miss doses. They’ll quit taking it early. They might not even take it at all.

RULE 1 STAND UP STRAIGHT WITH YOUR SHOULDERS BACK LOBSTERS—AND TERRITORY If you are like most people, you don’t often think about lobsters 2—unless you’re eating one. However, these interesting and delicious crustaceans are very much worth considering. Their nervous systems are comparatively simple, with large, easily observable neurons, the magic cells of the brain. Because of this, scientists have been able to map the neural circuitry of lobsters very accurately. This has helped us understand the structure and function of the brain and behaviour of more complex animals, including human beings. Lobsters have more in common with you than you might think (particularly when you are feeling crabby—ha ha).

Overture This book has a short history and a long history. We’ll begin with the short history. In 2012, I started contributing to a website called Quora. On Quora, anyone can ask a question, of any sort—and anyone can answer. Readers upvote those answers they like, and downvote those they don’t. In this manner, the most useful answers rise to the top, while the others sink into oblivion. I was curious about the site. I liked its free-for-all nature. The discussion was often compelling, and it was interesting to see the diverse range of opinions generated by the same question.

12 Rules for Life in English ( Introduction )