It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. . . . There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894–1963) was an English philosopher, intellectual, and writer of Brave New World and nearly fifty other books. His work was chiefly concerned with exploring the repercussions of modern society on the individual, with special interest in the effects of science and technology on twentieth-century life; he also became very interested in both Eastern and Western mysticism, as well as the use of psychedelics for their mind-expanding properties.