““It was a year, that year, Ellen knew, as she’d noticed from her 10th grade classmates and from observing her family — her new year’s resolution (it was stupid to have one but she was bored in class and made a list, then picked one) had been to be more alert, to think more truthfully about things, and it had affected her, she guessed, with better grades, an increase in self-esteem that was actually just a realization of how dumb everyone was, and nerdy, slightly annoying insights like this one — for doing something not even that exciting or wild and then saying, “Why not?” Or else saying, “Why not?” then doing something sort of forced and meaningless. Mostly people just went around saying, “Why not?” and, later on, when it came time to act, saying, “It’s too hard,” without ever actually doing anything.””
