12 Rules for Life (Full) ENGLISH

all part of the frenetic human activity that was ruining everything, and that
they deserved whatever they got. I said that taking revenge on people who
were just living normal lives was not going to help anything.
Years later, when I was in graduate school in Montreal, Chris showed up,
for what was supposed to be a visit. He was aimless, however, and lost. He
asked if I could help. He ended up moving in. I was married by then, living
with my wife, Tammy, and our year-old daughter, Mikhaila. Chris had also
been friends with Tammy back in Fairview (and held out hopes of more than
friendship). That complicated the situation even more—but not precisely in
the manner you might think. Chris started by hating men, but he ended by
hating women. He wanted them, but he had rejected education, and career,
and desire. He smoked heavily, and was unemployed. Unsurprisingly,
therefore, he was not of much interest to women. That made him bitter. I tried
to convince him that the path he had chosen was only going to lead to further
ruin. He needed to develop some humility. He needed to get a life.
One evening, it was Chris’s turn to make dinner. When my wife came
home, the apartment was filled with smoke. Hamburgers were burning
furiously in the frying pan. Chris was on his hands and knees, attempting to
repair something that had come loose on the legs of the stove. My wife knew
his tricks. She knew he was burning dinner on purpose. He resented having to
make it. He resented the feminine role (even though the household duties
were split in a reasonable manner; even though he knew that perfectly well).
He was fixing the stove to provide a plausible, even creditable excuse for
burning the food. When she pointed out what he was doing, he played the
victim, but he was deeply and dangerously furious. Part of him, and not the
good part, was convinced that he was smarter than anyone else. It was a blow
to his pride that she could see through his tricks. It was an ugly situation.
Tammy and I took a walk up towards a local park the next day. We needed
to get away from the apartment, although it was thirty-five below—bitterly,
frigidly cold, humid and foggy. It was windy. It was hostile to life. Living
with Chris was too much, Tammy said. We entered the park. The trees forked
their bare branches upward through the damp grey air. A black squirrel, tail
hairless from mange, gripped a leafless branch, shivered violently, struggling
to hold on against the wind. What was it doing out there in the cold?
Squirrels are partial hibernators. They only come out in the winter when it’s
warm. Then we saw another, and another, and another, and another, and