Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to

People who like rocks see cool rocks everywhere.

People who like birds see interesting birds everywhere. The tree on your yard could be an exceptional specimen. The world around you could be amazing and magical, but you aren't enough of a nerd to see it.

i am renouncing useless guilt, and refraining from making a cult of suffering. i am living in the now (or at least the soon), doing what i fear, trusting joy, and believing i will figure it out. i am taking the time to learn about what brings me joy, not just relief, what feels nourishing, not just numbing.

The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning

Maria Popova themarginalian.org

Something strange and wondrous begins to happen when one spends stretches of time in solitude, in the company of trees, far from the bustle of the human world with its echo chamber of judgments and opinions — a kind of rerooting in one’s deepest self-knowledge, a relearning of how to simply be oneself, one’s most authentic self. Wendell Berry knew... See more

Maria Popova • Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself

The Replacing Guilt series

mindingourway.com

“What I have always wanted is to expand the frame of humanity, to shift the brackets of images and ideas,” Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects in The Message (public library) — his soulful and sobering reckoning with the power of words and the power structures roiling beneath the landscape of permission for making the images and ideas we call art. What... See more

Maria Popova • The Marginalian

the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living — for, as Annie Dillard memorably put it, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Maria Popova • 17 Life-Learnings From 17 Years of the Marginalian

A large percentage of people’s problems in work, love and life are due to some combination of vagueness and passivity. You don’t know what you want to spend your time on; you don’t know what kind of person you really get along with; you don’t know what kind of clothing looks good to you; you don’t know what you value in a city; you don’t know how... See more

Ava • Why You Should Write More