And so (as I mentioned a few days ago), while the title of Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck seems to imply that we should coolly brush off the entire world and all its sh*t and not care about a single thing—in actuality, Manson’s thesis is that we should carefully choose what to care about and struggle for.

According to Manson, there are good values and bad values. We should give serious f*cks about good values, but not about bad ones. He says there are three differences between good and bad values:

“Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable. Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate or controllable.”

One personal story he tells—in a different section of the book—stands out particularly in my mind, in relation to these points. A woman (and this is a true story, he says) fell in love with him after a brief encounter. Convinced that they were meant to be together, she stalked and harassed him for the next seven years. No matter whether he ignored her, politely asked her to stop, or angrily asked her to stop, she persisted.

This is an example of someone whose values are bad in all three ways: (1) The woman’s superstitious beliefs led her to think that the match was destined. (2) Her behavior was socially destructive because she negatively affected the lives of Manson and people close to him. (3) Her beliefs about Manson were not immediate because she thought she would experience happiness with him in the indeterminate future, even though he was showing her no affection now; and her beliefs were not controllable because it’s impossible to force someone to love you.

To transform her values into good ones, she could have done the following: (1) Identify the facts and separate them from the fantasies, for example by focusing on Manson’s responses to her overtures, instead of on mystical interpretations of signs from the universe. (2) Work on behaving in ways that produce positive outcomes and responses from others; no tangible good was coming of her contacting Manson, and his responses to her were not positive. (3) Think about what she has control over right now, and work on those things; for example, she could work on learning a new skill or cultivating a new attitude.

I confess, I have a number of superstitions. In fact, in counting them up to write this post . . . well, I have more than I had realized. That’s something I’m going to have to work on. Do you, like me, have any bad values that could, with a little personal effort, be discarded in favor of good ones?

I read a lovely, quaint poem that I’d like to share with you today. It has something valuable to say about love.

It’s short. I’d print it here if it weren’t for copyright law. Instead, I invite you to do a search for the poem Who’s Who by W.H. Auden. Then read the text on whatever site pops up.

Now, isn’t that a lovely one? Being fantastically ambitious or successful, the poem seems to say, will not save you from the whimsies of love.

And, no matter how ambitious or successful you are, you will not be appreciated by everyone you meet . . . maybe not even by the one you fall head over heels for.

Sigh. . . .

All together now—a big, collective sigh for the vagaries of love!

Let’s talk about how beautiful the human form is.

Let’s talk about the curving of the calf muscle, the bulging of bone and muscle at the ankle, the veins running down the foot.

Let’s talk about the starkness of black and white photography. Let’s talk about the lighting of this particular photo: haunting, yet delicate; revealing some, yet withholding more.

As Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson note in their book F*cked, bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and society often holds one type artificially aloft, whereas natural beauty comes in a great diversity of forms. Actually, it was Hutchinson who made that observation, and she was specifically referring to genitalia.

All right, then, as long as we’re talking, let’s talk about the beauty and importance of sex.

It’s beautiful. It’s important. Just like you.

Linking yourself harmoniously with another person requires an understanding and appreciation of passion—but not in the way you might expect.

Since sex and relationships are closely related concepts, in their book F*cked, Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson expend a fair amount of ink on relationships. They explain that, in order to have a healthy one, you must, must, must believe in your partner, and he or she must, must, must believe in you.

Otherwise, the best symbol for the two of you isn’t a rose . . . but a slice of bread heated on both sides.

“No matter how stupid a passion seems,” Fisher writes, “remember that anything someone feels passionately about cannot be stupid because it’s the reason they get up in the morning.”

Then she makes a joke, presumably to clarify that there are exceptions, but her point remains: you and your partner must respect each other’s passions. You must not ridicule them, explain them away, or urge their abandonment.

The word passion has one of those fascinatingly acrobatic etymologies: the kind that make language lovers swoon. It originally referred to suffering, especially the suffering of Christ, or to oratorios, notably by Bach, about the suffering of Christ. Over several centuries, the word morphed from meaning “suffering” to “a strong emotion or desire for something” to “a strong feeling of sexual love” to “enthusiasm about something.”

But at the root of the word is suffering: a longing for things to be different. A passion is something you cannot happily live without.

What is yours? What is your partner’s? Are you supportive of each other’s passions?