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18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again. The richest relationships are lifeboats, but they are also submarines that descend to the darkest and most disquieting places, to the unfathomed trenches of the soul where our deepest shames and foibles and vulnerabilities live, where we are less than we would... See more
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
Don’t be afraid to be an idealist. There is much to be said for our responsibility as creators and consumers of that constant dynamic interaction we call culture — which side of the fault line between catering and creating are we to stand on? The commercial enterprise is conditioning us to believe that the road to success is paved with catering to ... See more
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
Everything is eventually recompensed, every effort of the heart eventually requited, though not always in the form you imagined or hoped for. What redeems all of life’s disappointments, what makes all of its heartbreaks bearable, is the ability to see how the dissolution of a dream becomes the fertile compost of possibility. Buried between parenthe... See more
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
As Maya Angelou famously advised, when people tell you who they are, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absol... See more
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
because writing is the best means I have of metabolizing my own life
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
I think often of this verse from Jane Hirshfield’s splendid poem “The Weighing”:
So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
Yes, except we furnish both the grains and the scales. I alone can weigh the blue of my sky, you of yours.
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
18. How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are. Everything in life is a subset of one or a combinatorial function of all three. Seek people who love and give generously, who have the strength to suffer without causing damage. (Only strong people are safe people, the measure of strength being not the absence ... See more