Surrender control over your stories
This is what it means to have autonomy—you may not control life’s circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.
Atul Gawande • Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Kierkegaard said that the greatest hazard of all is losing oneself — dangerous because it occurs so quietly. To be fully ourselves, then, is a thunderous feat. It is to resist the inertia of comfort and conformity and half-lived lives; to engage in the deliberate, demanding act of self-authorship rather than assuming a role that has already been wr... See more
In the clarity that followed, I discovered another lesson: creation cannot emerge without confronting death. Standing at the edge of the void, something new can be born. In accepting my mortality—both its inevitability and proximity—something within me softened, creating space for something unexpected. Death strips away what no longer serves us, cl... See more
Steven Schlafman • 45: A Year of Death and Creation
To write a story that works, that moves the reader, is difficult, and most of us can’t do it. Even among those who have done it, it mostly can’t be done. And it can’t be done from a position of total control, of flawless mastery, of simply having an intention and then knowingly executing it. There’s intuition involved, and stretching—trying things
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