Thought provoking
"For me, that’s pretty much it: waking up and being excited and curiously restless to face the day ahead, and being very present with that day, and then going to bed feeling like it actually happened, that the day was lived. There’s nothing more than that, really."
Maria Popova • Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age
what if public libraries were open late every night and we could engage in public life there instead of having to choose between drinking at the bar and domestic isolation
Erin Glasstwitter.comI have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses.
To sit alone without any electric light is curiously... See more
To sit alone without any electric light is curiously... See more
Jeanette Winterson • Why I Adore the Night, by Jeanette Winterson
Keltner became convinced that awe could be a counteragent to these immiserating modern neuroses. Notably, not a single respondent in Berkeley’s 26-culture study cited consumer purchases as the source of their awe-story. In “Awe,” Keltner writes: “Awe occurs in a realm separate from the mundane world of materialism, money, acquisition and status... See more
We like to pretend that our generous impulses come naturally. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first. It's the reason... we have to get burned before we understand the power of fire; the reason our most meaningful relationships are so often those that
... See morecheryl strayed • Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar
That’s what commitments are—alternatives to self-obsession. Commitments free us to dedicate ourselves to something bigger than ourselves—to something beyond our shells. The French philosopher Jacques Maritain said that the meaning of life is “self-mastery for the purpose of self-giving.” This is the challenge of growing up—to turn the corner from... See more