There is no escaping pain in this life. Or at least I have never met someone who hasn’t felt the pain of being alive and being human. It’s a part of this incarnation we took. So instead of trying to not feel it or numb it, we can transmute it. Turning something that hurts into something that brings forth light.
For me,... See more
It’s easy to feel like the world is growing more distant, but kindness still lingers in the smallest gestures—a stranger pulling in their legs to let you pass, someone helping you gather fallen lemons, a quiet ‘bless you’ from across the room. These moments may seem fleeting, but perhaps they are sacred, tiny sanctuaries of warmth in our everyday... See more
americans treat optionality like a virtue when it’s actually a pathology. ppl optimize for keeping doors open indefinitely, never committing, never locking in, because they conflate flexibility with freedom. but optionality is not freedom, it’s just deferred responsibility.
eventually, optionality maximization leads to... See more
Encountered this late-in-life prose poem by Czeslaw Milosz while kicking around different epigraphs for my book; now hearing a voice say "you can stop worrying ... you did what was assigned to you" at age 90 is officially a life goal: https://t.co/jby9VlDiuy
One belief I have is that if you wish to be virtuous you will learn to eat cereal virtuously.
The novice of virtue is tempted by dreams of heroic acts, just as the novice sculptor daydreams of palatial monuments, or other grand work. But the master sculptor is extraordinary not because he has been commissioned for monumental bronzes (which may never... See more
There is this immense mental cage that people construct, plain to see: The "ideal" place to do something is always one level up from the responsibility you can affect. That way, you're never responsible for it not getting done.
this is an example
it's probably cleaner to say that:
> if you don't own your needs, a prospective partner can't knowingly choose to meet them
> you risk molding yourself around the preferences you believe someone to have
> you don't actually get to feel loved if you do... See more