He might’ve not woken up straight from a dream today, but it only took him a few moments of fighting through his bleary thought to recognize the fact that he had still dreamed. Sleep quality is still the same, so I don’t know why I care so much whether I’m dreaming or not. Nah, that’s a fucking lie. I understand that very well. No fucking way I’m going to complain about this to the therapist, though. She’ll probably say something like dreams are important for me to process my emotions and memories. The kind of bullshit that only a person who never had to suffer through a full night’s sleep that left them more tired than before can say.

  “Fuck. I haven’t even met her yet. Why am I already criticizing her? And it’s not like the line about dreams being important is so wrong or anything. Fuck, whatever. Gotta get up.” He groaned as he a slowly struggled upright before positioning himself on the edge of the bed. It then took him more than a few moments of cracking his knuckles and focusing on nothing in particular before he could finally gather the will and energy to push off of the bed. Since he still had plenty of time until he had to leave for the appointment, he decided to head in for a shower. Mostly because a shower will help put off the decision for what to do with his morning.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t bear showering for too long, so in less than fifteen minutes, he was all dressed and ready to get on with his day. Now all he had to do was decide what this first part of his day was going to look like. He sat on his desk chair with a sigh. Leisure or work was the first question to get through. Of course, answering either way would still force him to make at least one more decision afterwards. All the while, he still felt almost the same as yesterday, devoid of all wants and desire. I could just spend the whole morning crying and wallowing in misery. Probably better this way, no? Less chance of breaking down in front of another person.

  A good plan. Only he didn’t particularly feel like crying, and he also didn’t want to spend the next hour wallowing in misery. Oh, crying was still in the cards, being the most reasonable response to how he was feeling, which was, most definitely, still miserable. But it seemed that right now his mind had decided it wasn’t going to be reacting to only those emotions and that crying his heart out and wallowing in misery could wait. Maybe today was going to be like yesterday. Where he spent most of the day in the company of other people, so he was able to hold himself together pretty well for most of it. Of course, then the day’s end came, and he was left alone for good. So maybe reason why he didn’t feel like crying right now was because he was all cried out from yesterday.

  “Well…” He chewed on his lips. “If I can keep my… breakdown to just the end of the day, before I go to sleep, and still fall asleep fine and have an alright sleep, that’s fine by me. A good plan, even. Let it all pile up throughout the day, then let it flow out at the end of it. Rinse and repeat until I’ll start feeling better. That way, it would have the least impact on my life… Except for the part where I still don’t want to do anything and I’m not training as I used to.”

  After a minute of silence and listless despondence, Sam managed to make up his mind. The only thing he actually felt like doing right now was going back to his reading from yesterday. But he wanted to preserve the books for as long as possible, only reading them at night. So since any other leisure activity lacked enticement, he might as well spend this first part of his day training. Cultivating seemed like the least mentally demanding path before him, the activity most likely for him to make some actual progress with. This meant another day of his studies lagging behind, or more correctly, losing their lead, but that was fine.

  He barely spent any time cultivating yesterday, probably the least he had cultivated in a day ever since learning the process from Farris. But two months of efforts weren’t going to be wiped out by one day of relative inaction. He still held the same knowledge, the same skills and instincts that he had three days ago. He knew how to seek; knew how to excavate. All he had to do was just put it into practice and focus. And of course, focusing was going to be the major problem. But as it turned out, he didn’t mind the misses and failures all that much. For some reason, he wasn’t blaming himself for them, wasn’t blaming anyone. He managed to just let them go and start anew. On some cycles, it took time. He got lost in thought and melancholy before he found his focus again. But on others, he could start a new cycle straight away, one moment of weary inattention leading to a vigorous new attempt.

  His progress during the session was, obviously, still quite far from where it usually was (not that he was able to calculate his progress yet), but Sam felt satisfied with his efforts. With managing to give them in the first place. His alarm left him with a couple of minutes until he had to leave, so he decided to spend them doing Lin’s exercises that he forgot to do on Friday. His attempts were rather poor; he struggled with the memory of how he should do them more than he ought to have after all these weeks of practice. But that was fine. He got through them as well. So with about two minutes remaining to him, he switched back to his jeans and put on his headphones with the upbeat playlist playing before leaving his room.

  The walk to the hospital felt longer than usual, and he passed it in high-strung nervousnesses, feeling like a clump of anxiety being hammered from all sides by even more anxiety. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he was looking forward to the therapy session. Most likely, he wasn’t. He just knew he had to go through with it. For himself, though? Or for other people? The utilitarian choice would see him not giving a fuck about himself and how he was feeling as long as he could fulfill his “duty,” in Web-Web’s terms. So if he could just take a pill that would make him into a brainless workaholic, that would be the most prudent course of action.

  As long as I don’t need to be myself to carry out this duty, I suppose. It’s a classic trope after all, isn’t it? The ingenious prodigy who manages to do stuff no one else can do because they’re so quirky and their amazing mind makes them think in ways no one else can even fathom. He shuddered at the thought. Yeah, thankfully, I’m just myself. No ingenious prodigy here. Just a guy with the rare kind of brute luck that doesn’t affect the development of your personality one bit.

  The whole debate doesn’t even matter. There’s no pill that would make me able to train as much as I need to, no matter how I feel. The only way for me to do the job I was brought here for is to stop feeling like this. Mentally improve enough so that I’ll be able to dedicate the same time, effort, and focus as before. He shook his head. This line of thought was leading him nowhere. Instead, he tried keeping his mind blank for the remainder of the walk, hoping that the music will help him relax.

  A couple of minutes later, he finally made it to the hospital, and was greeted by Maurice, who, after asking for his wellbeing, started leading him inside. They didn’t speak any more than that, besides Maurice wishing him good luck before parting. Sam took a long breath, and, while exhaling, opened the door and stepped in.

  “Sam,” said the smiling woman sitting inside, “welcome. Please take a sit.” She gestured opposite her. Sam did as he was told, giving the woman a curt nod as he sat down with a blank face. “Some introductions before we begin, then. My name is Rose Mathis. Feel free to call me Rose.”

  “No Dr. Mathis? I thought you were a psychiatrist.”

  “I am trained as one, yes. And no, call me Rose, please.” She then held up a recorder. “Is it alright if I record our meetings? It would be for my use and my use only. So that I could fully focus on our conversation. After the meeting, I will listen to the recording in case there’s anything I want to write down before deleting it. You don’t have to agree if you don’t want to. It’s up to you.”

  Sam shrugged. “That’s fine, I don’t care.”

  Rose smiled again before continuing her introduction. She didn’t give Sam her full list of accolades and expertise, he was sure of it, but she gave him enough of the usual spiel for his mind to start drifting off. She apparently caught his inattention because she suddenly stopped her attempt to convince Sam she was professional enough to be his therapist. “I apologize for that. Many of my patients are rather reluctant to attend therapy, so I have developed the habit of fully going over who I am and what I do when I meet with a new patient.”

  “That’s fine. Most therapists I’ve been to have given me this version of what you just did. It’s just that I’m more than familiar with the song and dance by now.”

  “So you have been to therapy before?”

  Sam titled his head. “Isn’t that written down in your files?”

  “It is not. I admit that I have much more information about you than I usually have on my patients before meeting them, but it is still woefully incomplete. Which is something that I, ordinarily, would spend the first few meetings I have with a new patient trying to solve. Getting to know you and more about you. Since you’ve been to therapy before, you must know how the process goes. I ask questions about your personal history, you family, childhood, your history of mental health and so on.”

  Sam nodded. “Yes. And I hate this part.”

  “Then you might appreciate my suggestion that we skip it.”

  “Skip it? How will that work?”

  “I would simply be learning about you as I go. Let my the introduction occur naturally, over time, instead of all at once. After all, you are here because of a rather… pressing concern. I imagine that you wouldn’t like it if we just spent the entire session today talking about your past and avoiding the present.”

  “You’re the boss. I don’t care what we talk about as long as I end up feeling better.”

  “And do you expect to feel better after today’s meeting?”

  “Not really. But I expect it to help with the process of feeling better. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re depressed. When you’re dealing with trauma or whatever. You go to a therapist and they help you get better.”

  “Was that your experience in the past?”

  “Yes? Maybe. I don’t know. I went to three different psychologists in my life and one psychiatrist in conjunction with the second one. Those two’s treatment worked really well until the accident. Then, once I got ‘well enough,’ the hospital provided me with its own therapist that specialized in helping people like me, like I was. But my memories stop after only a couple of meetings with that guy, so I must’ve gotten taken around that time. Before he could prove his worth. Which makes you the fourth and second at once, I suppose.”

  “And what do you hope to get out of our sessions? This treatment?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? You said yourself, I have a pressing matter in that I feel like shit and I want to stop feeling like it so that I could go back to how I was before.”

  “By before you mean three days ago? When you were still under the effects of your brain getting used to magic?”

  “Yes. What else could I be talking about?”

  “Perhaps about an even earlier period. Before your accident, maybe?”

  “Yeah… no. Going back to that state of mind would be pretty much impossible. I’m not even sure that I would want to, honestly. Just going back to feeling like I was three days ago is good enough for me. I wasn’t feeling the best, but I felt pretty good most of the time, and I could give all of my efforts to my training. That’s the important part, really.”

  “I see. I want to address that last part, about training being the most important in your eyes, but before that, I would like to ask you about something else that you said. You’re not sure that you want to go back to how you were feeling before the accident? Am I correct in paraphrasing what you said?”

  “Mhm…”

  “Alright, so could you try and explain why you think that?”

  Sam cleared his throat, twisting his head sideways and scratching his nape in discomfort. “I… ugh, I just meant that… ahem. Alright… so I was just thinking that if could pick for myself a state of mind to be in, then changing my mentality, personality, subconscious and whatever, to be like it was before the accident, it’s probably not for the best… for me as I am right now. Obviously, it’s impossible to outright change your brain, so that’s a moot point. But my point is that even with how horrible the accident was and all the mental damage it gave me and whatnot. It probably helped when it came to handling my new life here. You know, it’s like the trauma made me a stronger person, so I don’t want to go back to how I was before, because then I would be having a harder time right now.”

  “It’s interesting that’s where your mind went. I had only intended to speak about your emotional state back then, whether you preferred how you were feeling back then to how you are feeling now. But of course, the overall psychological profile is also something that’s worth considering. Even if you can’t turn back the clock. In essence, you’re saying that even if you felt happier back then, you would not like to go back to who you were because that is not who you need to be in order to handle your current situation. Did I get that right?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Would you mind trying to explain a little more what makes you think that? Why would the you from before the accident handle what you’re going through worse than the current you?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, mental trauma can make people more… resilient in the long run. If they don’t suffer a mental breakdown or other long-lasting effects, I guess. Which I don’t think I did. Obviously I’m not trying to make a blanket statement or an empirical claim, I’m just talking about myself in this once instance. And what I feel is that, because of the accident, my mental fortitude or whatever got stronger. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have been able to handle being taken if not for the accident. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that I’m handling it better than I would’ve if the accident hadn’t happened.”

  “Are you are glad the accident happened, then?”

  “Not glad. I wouldn’t go that far. If I went back in time and could choose whether to suffer through it, I probably wouldn’t go through with it. But since it’s in the past, and it already happened, I can be fine with it having have happened. Obviously I don’t suffer from any negative physical aftereffects of it anymore.” He gestured to his lower half. “So if the positive mental changes outweigh the negative, then I should pick to be the me who had the accident, and no longer suffers from it, over the me who didn’t and doesn’t benefit from it.”

  “It’s an interesting question. Whether the positive mental changes outweigh the negative…”

  “Well, I can ride in cars now. Even if I still don’t feel comfortable. I’m not sure what other negative change there might be. I mean, my legs are back. That’s pretty much the crux of the mental woes from back then.”

  “So you wouldn’t say that you, perhaps, tend to worry more about possible physical damage, the loss of your limbs, maybe, than you did before the accident? That you’re afraid and more cautious of suffering from a similar loss?”

  Sam gulped. “Ah. Maybe… So that’s in your files?”

  “In conjecture only.”

  “Well, I still think that the positive outweighs the negatives, whatever they may be.”

  “And the positive is your mental resiliency being stronger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you care to try and predict how you would’ve reacted to being a Taken without having suffered through the accident?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I would’ve been fine anyway. What with the magic in my brain and all. But I still don’t think that I would’ve been able to react as well as I did. Maybe right now I would be in even greater emotional turmoil.”

  “In what way?”

  “I mean… this might be the worst I have ever felt in my life. But I know for a fact I can still feel worse. So if me, as I am right now, can feel worse, then a me that’s a little less… resilient, probably will. As for a concrete example… I don’t know, maybe not being to get out of bed?”

  Rose nodded in contemplation, and the conversation paused for a few moments before she finally said, “You mentioned that you have ‘been able to react as well as you did’ to being a Taken. What exactly does that entail, in your opinion?”

  “It’s both emotionally and functionally, or behaviorally, whichever of the two fits. It’s that I felt pretty fine for most of the time and that I was able to train and study as much as I did.”

  “So it’s those two in conjecture with each other? If you were feeling ‘pretty fine’ but were unable to train as much as you did, or vice versa, you wouldn’t think you had handled that period well?”

  “Not as well. But it’s not like the second can exist without the first. If I didn’t feel alright, then I wouldn’t have been able to train as much.”

  “So it’s the training that’s more important to you, then? In the first case I suggested, where you felt just like you did, but didn’t behave the same way with regard to training, you would say that was handling it worse?”

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  “Yeah, sure. But again, it’s not a possible scenario.”

  “But let’s say that it is. If you could choose between the two scenarios, which would you choose?”

  “I see where you’re going with this. What do you want me to say? That training is more important to me than being happy? Because I’ll admit it. If I had to choose between the two, I’d choose training.”

  “Could you tell me why?”

  “I don’t know, because it’s the right thing to do?”

  “Why is it the right thing to do? You are speaking of potentially sacrificing your happiness for training. Which is not a goal in it of itself, so let’s say you’re training in order to become much stronger. I’m assuming that you wish to participate in the war and you pursue strength in order to do so effectively. So yes, it is certainly a morally commendable thing to do, to sacrifice your happiness for the war-effort and to save the lives of others.”

  “Well there you go.” Sam upturned his hand. “Saving other lives at the expense of not even my own, but just my happiness, is surely the right thing to do if I am able to do so.”

  “But that is a choice that a few people are willing to make. I’d wager that even most Rulers have not made that choice, that they are able to lead a happy life even while endangering it for the sake of others. Not to mention most people in the Web, that aren’t soldiers and—”

  “I’m not trying to say that I’m better or anything than most people. Just that the right choice for me is, if it was a binary one between happiness and strength, would be to choose strength.”

  “I didn’t mean to insinuate that you think you are a better person than anyone else. Although, I would like to point out that, in my opinion, that choice of strength over happiness is something that should not be taken for granted. There is certainly room to applaud you for making what is, essentially, a very selfless choice.”

  Sam scoffed. “Well I still haven’t made any choice, right? I just said that I would’ve. Acted like I did. Right now, I’m both unhappy and not training as much as possible.”

  “But you have made a choice. You chose to be here right now. And according to you, what is most important for you to get out of our meetings is to go back to how you were feeling three days ago; not because you were happier, but because you were able to train more. I don’t think you were lying to me or lying to yourself. So in essence, you have already made a choice between happiness and strength. Even if the choice was completely a hypothetical. Which, I would like to assure you, it is. There is no reason you would be unable to find happiness, to live a happy life, even if your number one goal would be to become stronger and exert that strength in the front.”

  “I’m well aware of that. Like I said, without being happy, or at the very least feeling somewhat fine, I obviously won’t be able to train like I did. So it’s a moot question on top of being purely hypothetical.”

  “Perhaps. But we did get an important answer out of it, no? So what makes strength so important to you that you would choose it over happiness?”

  “Can’t I just be one of those people who will never be happy if there’s someone stronger than them?”

  “Are you one of these people?”

  “No.”

  “Than my question still stands, doesn’t it? Because while the choice between strength and happiness might be hypothetical, you have already made some very real choices. You have chosen to attend the academy after only a day of living in this world. And while it so not a single or perhaps even conscious choice, but you have chosen, during every day of the last two months, to put all of your efforts towards your studies and your training. And like we said, your choice to have come here today, is very much motivated by your answer to that hypothetical question. But let me frame my question differently: You categorized your willpower in the past as, possibly, lacking for the purpose of acting in the way you’ve been since your return, but you didn’t say that you would’ve chosen to act differently if you were in that previous state of mind. So why is becoming stronger so important to you that even the person you were before the accident would’ve chosen a path that is, frankly, and by your own admission, incredibly difficult?”

  Sam gulped and looked down to his knees for a couple of seconds while trying to avoid thinking of the actual answer. After what felt like a minute, he said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Why?”

  “I have an… incredible potential. I can’t not make use of it.”

  “Why not? You wouldn’t be the first Thread-Weaver nor the first Taken to choose a civilian life.”

  “Sure but I would be the first Thread-Weaver Taken to do so if I did. I have the ability to… influence the future. Save people. I can’t let it go to waste. Not with a clear conscience.”

  “There’s still a balance to be struck between letting your talents go to waste and wasting yourself away in order to meet your potential.”

  “Sure, obviously there is. But we were talking about two binary options. And the first one saw me living a happy life or whatever, away from the front lines, doing whatever the fuck I want. And let’s say that the second one saw me becoming a Ruler and saving the lives of… thousands. Those thousands of lives are worth more than my happiness.”

  “Ok… so when do you think you initially made the rationalization that thousands of other people’s lives matter more than your happiness?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if I judged you correctly, then what you’ve just described is a deeply held belief of yours, and you’ve agreed that you already held it before your accident. But you weren’t born thinking like this, at some point during your development, you had to adopt that belief. Care to guess when?”

  “I don’t know. Aren’t most people willing to give their life if it means saving thousands of others? Sure, we’re talking about my happiness and living my life rather than giving it away, so the discussion’s a little different, but the moral drive is still the same. I feel like it’s a pretty common belief all in all, for most people at least. You start developing empathy and pretty soon you realize that the lives of other people are worth just as much to them as your life is to you. Afterwards, the leap to being willing to give your life or happiness away to save a huge number of other lives is pretty short.”

  “So you’re saying that every, let’s say adult your age, if presented with the same circumstances as you, and the same choices, would’ve made the same choice?”

  “Most normal people, I’d say, yeah. Normal or better, I guess I should say.”

  “Better being more moral?”

  Sam shrugged. “I suppose. I feel like the initial belief is instinctive to most people or whatever. Then it’s just a question of willpower. Of being able to carry out your decision, your instinctive belief. That’s the hard part, especially if we’re not just trading our life away but are forced to continue living with that choice and its consequences. But making the initial choice isn’t anything that special. Most people would make the same hypothetical choice I did.”

  “And afterwards, they will be faced with the struggle of making that choice into a reality. So what happens if they fail? They essentially go back and choose happiness over strength?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think a person can ever be happy, after having failed to meet what they held to be such a clear moral goal.”

  “So it’s a lose-lose situation either way? No matter what you choose, you end up unhappy?”

  “No, if you chose strength first, then obviously you’re moral enough to care about other people, so that if you fail, whatever that means, you’re unhappy because you’ve failed all those people. But a person that’s able to choose happiness won’t care about other people, so they wouldn’t have any problems.”

  “I see. So what does failing look like to you?”

  “Not saving those… thousands of people.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “So you’re saying that only the result matters? That even if you gave all of your efforts to becoming stronger, at the cost of your happiness, that it won’t matter if you fail to save those hypothetical figures?”

  “Failing to save them means that I didn’t give all of my effort.”

  “Alright… And who are those people? Are they soldiers under your command? Soldiers in general? Civilians?”

  “Just people. People that I need to save.”

  “But if you don’t know who they are, then how can you judge whether you saved them or not? No matter how strong you might become in the future, you can’t save the lives of every soldier out there.”

  “That’s not true. If I can become strong enough to win the war, I could do that.”

  “So is that your goal? To become strong enough that you can end war?”

  “No,” Sam lied, “that was just an example.”

  “I would think there are more concrete example you could give. To become a Chosen, for one. If you managed to become a Chosen, would that be enough for you to consider your goal having been met?”

  “Sure, I guess. The only thing I care about is becoming the strongest version of myself possible. So that I’ll be able to… do the most good I can with my talents.”

  “But you must realize that if you keep your goal so amorphous that you might never feel like you accomplished it. Even worse, you might start thinking that you failed. And according to you, that will surely mean that you will also be unhappy. A lose-lose situation again.”

  Sam suppressed an annoyed grunt and leaned back. This was going nowhere. This whole discussion was fruitless. He knew what success looked like; he knew what failure looked like; he just couldn’t describe it to anyone. They were focusing on the least of his worries right now. “Look, I assure you, I don’t care about the future, whether I’ll meet my amorphous goal or whatever. I’m not worried about that. What’s important to me is that right now, in the present, I do all I can to become stronger. That’s measurable, that’s concrete, that’s my real goal. What I’ll do with my strength doesn’t matter as long as I did everything in my power to ensure I end up as strong as I possibly can be.”

  “Alright. So what does it look like to do everything in your power to ensure you end up as strong as you can be? Are you currently falling short of that goal because you would usually be using this time for studying?”

  “No. I realize that I’m not a robot and sometimes I need to take it easy on myself. It’s just… I imagine myself like a character in a video game. Like the Sims, for example, doesn’t matter if you’re not familiar. The character has a bar for their fun or whatever. And if that bar drops too low, then the character starts feeling like shit and they can’t function as well. For me, doing everything I can, means that I’m never making the choice to ‘improve my fun’ when I don’t need to. That everything else being equal, and I have the option of either training or doing something for fun, that I won’t decide to do something for fun just because that’s what my desires tell me to do. That as long as the physical and emotional parameters of who I am allow me to train and study effectively, that’s what I’m doing.

  “Right now, I can’t train and study as much as I usually do, and as effectively. I realize that. So it’s alright if I don’t do what I usually do. It’s also alright if, at times like this, I do something for fun even though the bar is neutral. Because that would make me, in the game at least, feel better, which would cancel out some of the other shit I’m feeling and help me train more and better overall. In the end, it’s all about willpower. I need to be strong enough to not give in to the part of me that wants to play games instead of writing an essay or whatever. If I feel good enough to write the essay, and if I have enough energy, then the only thing standing between me and doing the right thing is myself. We’re talking about needing to make a conscious choice that’s decided by whether, at that moment, my willpower is stronger than my self-serving base desires.”

  “And what happens if you make the ‘wrong’ conscious choice?” Rose asked. “Does that mean that you immediately fall short of your goal? Because one time you didn’t do all in your power to become stronger?”

  “No. Probably not. But it’s still means that I made the wrong choice. And that I might need to work harder in the future to fix it. But like I said, I was talking in video game terms. This was an ideal I’ve described. In reality, I don’t really know where my ‘fun’ bar is currently at, or whether my choice to take it easy is necessary or indulgent. I just need to remember my obligation and keep in mind the ideal. To try and give it my all when I can, and not let myself off easy unless I’m absolutely certain that I need to ease off.

  “Also, I take the opinion of other… people into account. If they think that I’m doing well enough, then I’m willing to concede to their judgment. That allows me to take it easy if I’m not sure that I need to, or allowed to, because they’re like an objective observer. Like these last two days, for example. People told me that I have the time to lose and that it’s OK for me to not train as hard while I feel like this. I’m not bashing my head against the wall, lamenting every break I’ve taken, as though I caused someone’s death because of it.”

  Rose straightened in her sit and clasped her hands together. “So what does this all mean for how you approach your mental health? Are you also looking at it, at our meetings, for example, as something that you must do, conscious choices that you must make even though you might desire to do something different? You placed training over happiness, yes, but you still need happiness in order to train. So is your approach to happiness the same as your approach to training? Is there an optimal path towards happiness the same way there is towards strength?”

  “Well I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it all that much. I guess that I don’t really see making myself feel better as something that I can actively do. Just something that will happen to me.”

  “Why not? Coming to this meeting is something you actively did. Taking a break in order to feel better in the long run is an action.”

  “Sure but it’s not like there’s another choice. Or a better choice, I should say. It’s not like playing video games or cultivating where I might want the first strongly enough that it will prevent me from doing the latter even if I were able to. Right now, there’s just this set list of things that will, hopefully, make me feel better. Let’s say playing video games is the part of me that wants to be happy and cultivating is the part that wants to be strong. Right now, both parts are in unison. I need to make myself happier in order to be stronger. So I didn’t really have to make a choice. It’s not like there’s two choices for what would make me happy, or mentally healthier, and I’m choosing the one that will make me feel better faster, or that will allow me to train as well, but not the one I really want.”

  “Alright. So let’s say we’re a couple of months into the future. And our meetings, and the passage of time, and a bunch of other things, made it so that you are able to go back to your usual schedule—”

  “I hope that it wouldn’t take as long as that.”

  “A month, then. In a month, you’ll be feeling well enough to spend your Sunday morning studying like you usually did. Which means that you’ll have a choice. Between having this appointment, in order to, in a way, feel happier, or studying, in order to become stronger. What will you do then? Does your pursuit of better mental health end the minute you are able to go back to how you behaved three days ago, because there is no need to ‘raise the bar’ any higher than the neutral level?”

  “I don’t know about the future, but in the past, even when I was feeling pretty good, I still continued going to therapy. I still needed it, or thought that I needed it at least, in order to maintain how I felt. A friend of mine still goes to a therapist semi-regularly. Despite her being one of the most incredible and resilient people that I know. So I’m assuming that I’ll still keep the meetings going, even if it conflicts with my usual schedule. I mean, the only reason I didn’t start with therapy up till today was because Maurice told me I should wait. Even when I was still feeling better three days ago, I realized that I’ll probably be better off with it.”

  “And would you be better off because it will make you happier? Or because it will help you dedicate more efforts to becoming stronger?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s both. I need to maintain some level of ‘happiness’ in order to be able to dedicate more effort. But I since don’t know what that level is, maybe I’m being risk averse by keeping to the same weekly schedule instead of every two weeks or doing away with therapy all together.

  “But yeah. You’re right. When I’m talking about feeling better, any why I wanted to go to therapy even before Friday, I’m just thinking of a baseline of happiness. Exactly like the fun bar. It’s the level of happy, or mental health, that I need to be in order to be able to dedicate my efforts to getting stronger in the most efficient way. So in a way, the optimal path towards happiness is just a part of the optimal path towards strength. Let’s say I get to that baseline, and there are still levels of happiness above that, but reaching them would require me to make sacrifices in the optimal configuration of my training. Since I’m hoping that I won’t decide to make those ‘sacrifices,’ I guess that means that I would be prioritizing my overall strength over my overall happiness. But I would still be happy. Just maybe not as happy as I could maximally be. And I don’t think it’s even a bad thing for anyone not to pursue their ‘maximum’ happiness first and foremost.”

  Rose nodded. “I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with making the choice you’ve just described. It is an extreme to pursue your own happiness at all costs. But before you were talking about extreme happiness, you were talking about happiness that was only above a baseline, so you might be still be making a real sacrifice, a sacrifice that many people would struggle to make. Still, it is important that you understand that being happy is not a sign of a failure on your part, and not only that, but that you keep stressing the fact that happiness is important for your pursuit of your goals.

  “Also, I think it’s important for you to remember that as long as you’re getting something out of your desires, of anything that makes you happier and raises your ‘fun bar,’ that it is not necessarily a bad choice; a failure of your willpower. You said yourself that you can’t really know what’s going on deep in your heart, and where your abilities and choices really lie. So it might be, that throughout your entire life, you would never actually make a choice that was ‘bad.’ And all the choices you’ll make that were for your happiness instead of your strength were made because you had to, and you were practically unable to choose the latter option. And even when that’s not true, it still doesn’t mean that you weren’t better served in the long run by choosing to pursue happiness instead of strength for a while. We’re human beings—not robots, like you said—we can’t and shouldn’t always be perfect and unerring. Anxiety is important, and self-examination and even self-reproach as well, but with a goal and stakes as high as yours, you need to temper them or they will stop being a positive force.”

  Sam sighed. “Yeah, I know that. I try to.”

  “Good, it’s very important that you remember that. Part of why you’re struggling now, in my opinion, is that there’s still a large part of you that won’t allow you to rest and forgo training, no matter what. And that part is not rational. I’m not a soldier, but according to what I’ve been told, there is no reason for you to feel as though you haven’t put in enough effort in your training. And you certainly don’t have a reason to feel bad for not being able to put in as much effort in the last two days as you usually do. You need to internalize that you have been putting a lot of effort in, enough effort. But you will never be able to internalize that without allowing yourself some measure of ‘error,’ of straying from the optimal path. I assure you, once you accept both of those things, you will start feeling better.”

  “Yeah well… if I’m being honest, it’s mostly a bunch of other stuff that’s doing my head in and making me feel like shit right now. Maybe you were right as far as the me from three days ago was concerned, but I don’t think there’s anything I can internalize right now that would make me feel better. That will only come time, therapy and a bunch of other stuff. And pills, I guess.”

  “Time is certainly the most important component. And I believe our meetings will definitely help you. As for pills, I can prescribe you a psychiatric treatment as well, if you want.”

  “You’re the expert. You tell me if I want it or not.”

  “From what we’ve talked about, it seems to me that you see what you’re going through, the process of bettering your mental health, as purely reliant on time passing. I’m not arguing against that idea, don’t misunderstand me. I agree with your assessment and I would be very happy to see it prove true. And if it is true, our therapy sessions are perhaps more of an accelerant for the process rather than a necessity. You said that you were already interested in therapy for quite a while, but you also said that ultimately, you were able to act optimally according to your goals without it. Of course, since therapy is already on the table and we’ve both agreed to it, there’s no reason to stop with it now, and I do believe that it will help hasten the process you’re going through.

  “But as for a psychiatric treatment, since you feel so strongly about your ability to overcome your current mental state in time, and with the help of therapy. Then… let’s say that I don’t think there is a necessity for you to go down a psychiatric avenue unless you want to. If I had a pill that I could give you that would magically make you feel like you did three days ago, with no mental or physical side effects, I would gladly give you one. But there isn’t. You’re probably familiar enough with psychiatric treatment to know that it takes time to start working, and it can take a lot of trial and error. So if you feel like you can do without it, and as long as you don’t want it, I would advise that we to continue as is, at least for now. Of course, I can still prescribe you with something for emergencies. Like a panic attack, for example. The won’t be as part of a long-term regimen, but it could certainly be an aid that, as long as you use it in moderation, would have no side effects.”

  Sam shrugged with a sigh. “Yeah, I really don’t have one strong opinion on one side or the other. So if you think I’ll do fine without than that’s what I’ll go with.”

  “Alright. Then I will write you a prescription for the latter option I suggested. I’ll leave when to take the pills up to you. You’re not supposed to take them for more than a week straight, but since we’re meeting once a week, just make sure to tell me if you did and we’ll see where to go from there.”

  “Alright.” Sam looked at the clock behind her. “So same time next week, I assume?”

  “Yes. I’ll also give you my number. Feel free to contact me at any hour of the day if you need to. And before you get up, I would like to mention that if you want to keep this, or other meetings a little longer, that’s alright. We’re not on the clock here. And of course, if you feel like you want to meet more than once a week…”

  Sam nodded while getting up. “Thanks. But I’m alright for today. See you next week.”

  She got up to accompany him to the door. “Take care, Sam.”