“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.

similar topics

• In García Márquez's Macondo, the dead talk with the living, rain falls for four years, and no one is surprised. Does magical realism make reality more real by making the miraculous ordinary?
• Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich only asks on his deathbed, what if my whole life was lived wrong? Why do people postpone authenticity to the very end while believing they are living correctly?
• Sylvia Plath's heroine imagines a fig tree where every fig is a possible life, and because she cannot choose one, they all rot and fall. Is endless possibility freedom, or paralysis?
• A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.