I’m always taken aback by the relaxation that floods through me when I’m reminded of my almost complete lack of importance in the scheme of things. One might expect to find such reflections depressing or demotivating. But I experience them as liberating; my shoulders drop, and I’m able to exhale. The truth, as one spiritual teacher puts it, is that

You get to proceed in the splendidly imperfectionist spirit of the eco-philosopher Derrick Jensen, who says: ‘The good thing about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look, there is great work to be done.’

‘It was said of Rabbi Simcha Bunim that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha’olam – “For my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’aefer – “I am but dust and ashes.” He would take out each slip of paper as necessary, as a reminder to himself.’ – TOBA SPITZER

The exquisite precision of the ritual is intended to articulate and to honor the unrepeatable, unhoardable nature of the moment in which it occurs, as the nineteenth-century Japanese statesman Ii Naosuke explains: Great attention should be given to a tea gathering, which we can speak of as ‘one time, one meeting’ (ichi-go, ichi-e). Even though the

‘Perhaps all anxiety,’ writes Sarah Manguso, ‘might derive from a fixation on moments – an inability to accept life as ongoing.’

He illustrates the point by contrasting a famous 2005 commencement speech by Steve Jobs, in which the Apple founder urges his audience to search relentlessly for work they love, and never to settle for less, with these words, from the essayist Anne Lamott: Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more

In his book Anti-Time Management, Richie Norton boils this philosophy down to two steps. One: ‘Decide who you want to be.’ Two: ‘Act from that identity immediately.’

Scruffy hospitality means you’re not waiting for everything in your house to be in order before you host and serve friends in your home. Scruffy hospitality means you hunger more for good conversation and serving a simple meal of what you have, not what you don’t have. Scruffy hospitality means you’re more interested in quality conversation than in

This is the fate of the person that John Maynard Keynes described as ‘the purposive man,’ who ‘does not love his cat, but his cat’s kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kittens’ kittens, and so on forward forever to the end of cat-dom.’