bits of wisdom
by Rob Tourtelot · updated 3mo ago
bits of wisdom
- When you look back at the most fruitful moments of your life years from now, you’ll be surprised to discover how many of them unfolded amid a big loss or a crisis or in the face of a giant unknown.
from Tolerating Unknowns Will Make You Stronger by Heather Havrilesky
Rob Tourtelot added 5mo ago
- Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.”
from George Saunders's Advice to Graduates
Rob Tourtelot added 3mo ago
- Sometimes this takes the shape of resistance: I decide a feeling or a situation is bad on the spot and start to fight back before I know what’s there. Other times, this takes the shape of discomfort and shame: I am feeling a new way, so something must be wrong .
from Tolerating Unknowns Will Make You Stronger by Heather Havrilesky
Rob Tourtelot added 5mo ago
- In 1817, the poet John Keats wrote a letter to his brothers to share this exciting realization. “At once it struck me,” Keats wrote, “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement … Negative Capability.” Keats explains that “Negative Capability” is “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching ... See more
Rob Tourtelot added 5mo ago
I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist
from Helen Garner on Happiness: ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’ by Helen Garner
Rob Tourtelot added 5mo ago
- When we say to ourselves, “This feels bad. I need a way to fix this!” that’s the very moment when the most growth and promise lies at our fingertips. But in order to access it, we have to do the opposite of what we want to do. We have to resist the urge to analyze or find a solution or protect ourselves from our emotions.
We have to stop and feel mo... See morefrom Tolerating Unknowns Will Make You Stronger by Heather Havrilesky
Rob Tourtelot added 5mo ago
- For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first s... See more
from Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of R.A.I.N. by Tara Brach
Rob Tourtelot added 5mo ago
We need to let it go, let our life flow through our hands like a river and not try to grab some piece of it and hold on to it. Just to be present with it and find out how to express our vow in this moment, in this circumstance, right where we are right now, instead of trying to figure out how to make it the way we want so that it’ll be just what we
... See morefrom Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart by Zenkei Blanche Hartman
Rob Tourtelot added 4mo ago
- I think in a lot of these Eastern systems, the delusion is that we’re trapped inside this little machine that thinks it’s central, and permanent, and all-important and is always thinking it’s about its little victory narrative. But when you step out of it for a second, you see that it’s just a temporary construction of neurology, or karma, or whate... See more
from Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews George Saunders (Published 2021)
Rob Tourtelot added 3mo ago