Matt Haig - The Humans

‘It sounds awesome.’

‘It’s dull. It’s the dullest life you can imagine. Here, you have pain, and loss, that’s the price. But the rewards can be wonderful Gulliver.’

He looked at me, disbelieving. ‘Yeah. Well, I don’t have a clue how to find them.’

The phone rang. Isobel answered. Moments later, she was calling up to the attic.

‘Gulliver, it’s for you. A girl. Nat.’

I couldn’t help but notice the faintest of faint smiles on Gulliver’s face, a smile he felt embarrassed about and tried to hide under clouds of discontent as he left the room.

I sat and breathed, with lungs that would one day stop functioning but which still had a lot of warm clear air to inhale. Then I turned to Gulliver’s primitive Earth computer and began to type, giving as much advice as I could think of to help a human.

1. Shame is a shackle. Free yourself.

2. Don’t worry about your abilities. You have the ability to love. That is enough.

3. Be nice to other people. At the universal level, they are you.

4. Technology won’t save humankind. Humans will.

5. Laugh. It suits you.

6. Be curious. Question everything. A present fact is just a future fiction.

7. Irony is fine, but not as fine as feeling.

8. Peanut butter sandwiches go perfectly well with a glass of white wine. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

9. Sometimes, to be yourself you will have to forget yourself and become something else. Your character is not a fixed thing. You will sometimes have to move to keep up with it.

10. History is a branch of mathematics. So is literature. Economics is a branch of religion.

11. Sex can damage love but love can’t damage sex.

12. The news should start with mathematics, then poetry, and move down from there.

13. You shouldn’t have been born. Your existence is as close to impossible as can be. To dismiss the impossible is to dismiss yourself.

14. Your life will have 25,000 days in it. Make sure you remember some of them.

15. The road to snobbery is the road to misery. And vice versa.

16. Tragedy is just comedy that hasn’t come to fruition. One day we will laugh at this. We will laugh at everything.

17. Wear clothes, by all means, but remember they are clothes .

18. One life form’s gold is another life form’s tin can.

19. Read poetry. Especially poetry by Emily Dickinson. It might save you. Anne Sexton knows the mind, Walt Whitman knows grass, but Emily Dickinson knows everything.

20. If you become an architect, remember this: the square is nice. So is the rectangle. But you can overdo it.

21. Don’t bother going into space until you can leave the solar system. Then go to Zabii.

22. Don’t worry about being angry. Worry when being angry becomes impossible. Because then you have been consumed.

23. Happiness is not out here . It is in there .

24. New technology, on Earth, just means something you will laugh at in five years. Value the stuff you won’t laugh at in five years. Like love. Or a good poem. Or a song. Or the sky.

25. There is only one genre in fiction. The genre is called ‘book’.

26. Never be too far away from a radio. A radio can save your life.

27. Dogs are geniuses of loyalty. And that is a good kind of genius to have.

28. Your mother should write a novel. Encourage her.

29. If there is a sunset, stop and look at it. Knowledge is finite. Wonder is infinite.

30. Don’t aim for perfection. Evolution, and life, only happen through mistakes.

31. Failure is a trick of the light.

32. You are human. You will care about money. But realise it can’t make you happy because happiness is not for sale.

33. You are not the most intelligent creature in the universe. You are not even the most intelligent creature on your planet. The tonal language in the song of a humpback whale displays more complexity than the entire works of Shakespeare. It is not a competition. Well, it is. But don’t worry about it.

34. David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ tells you nothing about space, but its musical patterns are very pleasing to the ears.

35. When you look up at the sky, on a clear night, and see thousands of stars and planets, realise that very little is happening on most of them. The important stuff is further away.

36. One day humans will live on Mars. But nothing there will be more exciting than a single overcast morning on Earth.

37. Don’t always try to be cool. The whole universe is cool. It’s the warm bits that matter.

38. Walt Whitman was right about at least one thing. You will contradict yourself. You are large. You contain multitudes.

39. No one is ever completely right about anything. Anywhere.

40. Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you they just don’t quite understand the joke that is themselves.

41. Your brain is open. Never let it be closed.

42. In a thousand years, if humans survive that long, everything you know will have been disproved. And replaced by even bigger myths.

43. Everything matters.

44. You have the power to stop time. You do it by kissing. Or listening to music. Music, by the way, is how you see things you can’t otherwise see. It is the most advanced thing you have. It is a superpower. Keep up with the bass guitar. You are good at it. Join a band.

45. My friend Ari was one of the wisest humans who ever lived. Read him.

46. A paradox. The things you don’t need to live – books, art, cinema, wine and so on – are the things you need to live .

47. A cow is a cow even if you call it beef.

48. No two moralities match. Accept different shapes, so long as they aren’t sharp enough to hurt.

49. Don’t be scared of anyone. You killed an alien assassin sent from the other side of the universe with a bread knife. Also, you have a very hard punch.

50. At some point, bad things are going to happen. Have someone to hold on to.

51. Alcohol in the evening is very enjoyable. Hangovers in the morning are very unpleasant. At some point you have to choose: evenings, or mornings.

52. If you are laughing, check that you don’t really want to cry. And vice versa.

53. Don’t ever be afraid of telling someone you love them. There are things wrong with your world, but an excess of love is not one.

54. That girl you are on the phone to. There will be others. But I hope she is nice.

55. You are not the only species on Earth with technology. Look at ants. Really. Look. What they do with twigs and leaves is quite amazing.

56. Your mother loved your father. Even if she pretends she didn’t.

57. There are a lot of idiots in your species. Lots and lots. You are not one of them. Hold your ground.

58. It is not the length of life that matters. It’s the depth. But while burrowing, keep the sun above you.

59. Numbers are pretty. Prime numbers are beautiful. Understand that.

60. Obey your head. Obey your heart. Obey your gut. In fact, obey everything except commands.

61. One day, if you get into a position of power, tell people this: just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should. There is a power and a beauty in unproved conjectures, unkissed lips and unpicked flowers.

62. Start fires. But only metaphorically. Unless you are cold and it’s a safe setting. In which case: start fires.

63. It’s not the technique, it’s the method. It’s not the words, it’s the melody.

64. Be alive. That is your supreme duty to the world.

65. Don’t think you know. Know you think.

66. As a black hole forms it creates an immense gamma-ray burst, blinding whole galaxies with light and destroying millions of worlds. You could disappear at any second. This one. Or this one. Or this one. Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.