For this

I get bogged down in my own shortcomings.  Sink into them like a morass, my negativity never escaping the quicksand of my own judgment.

Then I go see a play.  It takes a really good play, a really blissful, exciting, transformative, imaginative sort of play, one that makes you see the things that aren't there, whether it's a cold winter's night or the inside of your own heart.

And when I see a play like this, everything falls into place again for a few hours.  The world makes sense when we can tell each other stories like this.  We might let the devil capture us for millennium, but one day we will find a way back out of the trap, and when we do we will have landed right back where we were taken, armed with a new knowledge of ourselves.

And if I can do this for people, if I can spend even a fraction of my life making up stories for people to discover themselves inside, I will be happy.  Not every second, and not always as deeply as I wish, but happy, and that happiness will be a thing that the joys of others will only increase, not threaten.

Inside a story, I may yet find the person it is I want to be.