Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to
The future won’t be built merely by those who move fastest, but by those who remember how to stand still. Until we recover the courage to receive what we cannot produce, we will mistake velocity for vision. And we’ll keep accelerating—not toward the good, but simply away from the ground.
Luke Burgis • Everything Is Fast
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.
There is still a drastic mismatch between the cultural script around marriage, in which a man grudgingly acquiesces to a woman salivating for a diamond, and the reality of marriage, in which men’s lives often get better an women’s lives often get worse. Married men report better mental health and live longer than single men; in contrast, married... See more
Just a moment...
Who gets to write shapes what gets to be written, which shapes what is remembered — that is the making of the collective selective memory we call history, and it is made of words. We invented words to name the world and invented power to apportion the named. It is our inventions that tell the fullest story of our nature. The range of them — the... 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
There are two modes of experience: appreciative, and evaluative.
Concrete example: let's say you're listening to a piece of music. Are you sinking into it, awash in emotions? You're in the appreciative mode.
Are you the mixing engineer, listening to the snare hits to make sure they're consistent? You're in the evaluative mode.
Much of sanity, and
... See moreHow does one maintain one’s creativity, optimism, intellectual vitality, and sense of agency in the face of endless forces luring towards conformity?
Sari Azoutsubstack.comvarda reveals the importance of three things in this journey: inspiration (the motivations, ideas, circumstances and happenstance that ignite the desire to create), creation (the means, structure, details, and the work), and sharing (perhaps the purpose of creation).