You’re reading the rough chapter and calling the whole book bad. Keep turning pages.

A part gets mistaken for the whole whenever the part is what you are currently inside. Any long thing contains stretches that are bleak on their own terms, and judged in isolation they would each look like the ending. The mistake is not the pain, it is the conclusion drawn while still in the middle of it.

When you catch yourself summarizing your whole life from a single bad month, notice that you are quoting a fragment. Look at what has already changed since a previous rough stretch. Continuing is not optimism; it is just refusing to file the verdict early.