This response to a 'I'm going to feel like a loser at my high-school reunion' letter to an online advice column included these 'grafs which are currently hurting my brain:

We have a mistaken need to exist in the eyes of other people. We mistake our own sense of existing with the sense of existing that we get when others acknowledge our existence. So you show up at things to maintain this being, this identity, in the consciousness of the group as you understand it. To not be there is to not exist in their eyes and thus encounter your own absence. Your own absence is frightening. It is a temporary nonexistence.

So we seek to be known, in order to exist in the minds of others, thinking that this adds somehow to the sum of our own existence. But it does not. Not where it counts. If we know that we ourselves exist, yet others do not know we exist, we still exist. But if we ourselves do not exist, and yet others think we exist, it doesn't help. We still don't exist no matter how many others think we exist. It would not even be satisfying to be thought of as a god if we did not actually exist. We wouldn't be able to enjoy it.

So it is preferable to bolster and intensify our own existence rather than spend time making sure other people we don't care about look at us and thus confirm our existence.

It's nice, because suddenly my hermit-like nature, especially as we enter this back-breaking, soul-crushing king-hell bitch of a season, is justified. I don't go out and interact because I'm better than all of you people.

But I think we all know that thinking like that is only possible for rank sociopaths and - misanthrope, though I am - I'm just too insecure to be a member of the sociopaths club (quick, what kind of uniforms do you think they would wear on game day in high school?).

So where does that leave us? Making small talk and smiling at the strangers we meet in the elevator, because if we can't make a stranger smile - or at least quizzically look at you - you might as well not be here at all.

And that's where Sundays like yesterday leave you the next day.