I’m a Matt Haig apologist

It’s true. Matt Haig is banal.

Just as I’m writing this, his most recent tweet reads, “Imagine if people could treat living people with the kindness they use when writing their eulogy.”

It’s alright. It’s nothing original, nothing groundbreaking. It’s just… fine.

And it’s why Matt Haig is one in a long list of celebrities I don’t follow on social media. Because a stream of trite, bite-sized mantras with predictable punchlines isn’t what I need right now.

But I’ve just finished The Midnight Library, and I can safely say that while I don’t need Matt Haig’s tweets, I do need his stories.

Haig’s writing is comfort food. It’s not always the most substantive, but it’s about survival. It’s about seeing the world from a specific angle just long enough to get you to the next day. And then the next, and the next, until you heal.

And that’s really the only way I know how to heal. By choosing to look at my life as a definitive success. By choosing to look at the world around me as, yes, a catastrophe, but a catastrophe that’s just on the brink of radical change.

It’s like Waymond says in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.

When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is…