Audubon on other minds and the secret knowledge of animals, the paradox of joy with Nick Cave and Lisel Mueller, how Dostoyevsky became a writer
Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it beco... See more
Maria Popova • 18 Life-Learnings From 18 Years of the Marginalian
joy, to our consternation, is a measure of our relationship to death and our living with death; joy is the act of giving ourselves away before we need to or are asked to; joy is practised generosity.