Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Since the ending is fixed and shared, a great deal of the gravity we attach to daily performance is misplaced. The meeting, the mistake, the awkward remark are not being recorded anywhere that will outlast you, and remembering that tends to loosen rather than to deflate. Lightness of this kind is not indifference; it is proportion.

Some things do deserve seriousness, and grief is not eased by a reminder that everyone dies, so it is not medicine for every occasion. Where it fits, ask which of today’s tensions you will still be able to name in a year. Most will have gone.