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Phil Christman, commenting on Blackness in an essay entitled “How to be White”:

We could say that Blackness is an oppressive fiction, and yet Black people rarely wish to have the designation itself lifted off them. It gives them a sense of commonality with other people, which is a useful thing to have in this world. The sense of surviving together the designation of Blackness makes a people where there was none before. Theologically, some have even said of Blackness—and the theological is an appropriate register in which to speak of it, given both the disproportionate religiosity of that community and the metaphysical weight of the crimes against it—what Joseph said of his brothers' crime against him: What you meant for evil, God meant for good.

Phil Christman:

Many Americans have been trained to believe that feeling is a form of labor, perhaps the most meaningful, while practical help only fixes symptoms. When a child feels the natural impulse to give a panhandler money, we tell them, if we’re stupid, that he only wants it for drugs, or, if we’re slightly less stupid, we recite a certain platitude about men and fish. (It’s hard to pay attention to a fishing lesson if you’re starving, just as it’s hard to ace the ACT if you haven’t eaten or slept.")

Oliver Burkeman, author of the superb Four Thousand Weeks, commenting on our misguided attempts to hoard our experiences:

The truth, of course, is that experiences are for having, not for hoarding. As J. Jennifer Matthews puts it, in her book Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are, “we cannot get anything out of life. There is no outside where we could take this thing to. There is no little pocket situated outside of life” to which you could take “life’s provisions and squirrel them away.” Spending your days trying to get experiences “under your belt”, in an effort to maximise your collection of experiences, or to feel more confident about the future supply of similar experiences, means placing yourself in a position from which you can never enjoy them fully, because there’s a different agenda at play.

“I’m getting a snack; do you want something?” my wife asks from the kitchen.

“No, I’m fine,” I reply. “I’ve got a candy cane.”