Thought provoking
"The key is to enjoy hanging out on the edge. That is, you find it interesting to attempt things one step beyond where you are right now. It could be the edge of your ability or the edge of your knowledge or the edge of your network.
If you reach — but just a little — and you do it every week, then you'll take on challenges that are manageable enou... See more
If you reach — but just a little — and you do it every week, then you'll take on challenges that are manageable enou... See more
3-2-1: On acting with confidence, the different types of age, and the importance of momentum
“This Is Good”
In front of large audience of people “considering some kind of life or career in the world of ideas,” as he put it, the economist Tyler Cowen asked Camille Paglia to offer a piece of advice based on her many years of soldiering through adversity, rejection, and failure before eventually emerging in her mid-40s as a successful and infl
... See moreDecades into his long life, the poet Robert Graves defined love as “a recognition of another person’s integrity and truth in a way that... makes both of you light up when you recognize the quality in the other.”
Maria Popova • What Love Really Means: Iris Murdoch on Unselfing, the Symmetry Between Art and Morality, and How We Unblind Ourselves to Each Other’s Realities
In his 2012 essay, “More people should write,” writer and programmer James Somers described this process as creating a mental bucket for an idea, thereby unleashing a magnetic force between that idea and the world:
When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular, I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me. That’s because everything I perceive will unconsciously engage on its way in with the substance of my preoccupation. A preoccupation, in that sense, is a hell of a useful thing for a mind.
Once you’ve discovered the right mental buckets, or containers, for your creative work, it’s time to maximize the potential for unexpected connections. But to surface those connections, you also need the right tools.
feelings are meant to be felt - that’s what they are for. We heal by acknowledging our emotions and test our heart’s resilience by lingering within the unbearable. It is something music can help us do. We find our hearts are much stronger than we presumed, and what we thought was unbearable was nothing of the sort. Music draws forth these subterran... See more
The Red Hand Files Issue #306
Nick Cave
This idea is common now, especially, in the West, that meditation might be more about relaxation, or maybe addressing stress. But that’s not the meat of the program. The center of that program is a deep, profound, and progressive investigation about the nature of who we are and how our own minds work. It’s a deep investigation about the way our emo... See more
Oshan Jarow • Your mind needs chaos
You need a very strong container to hold the contents and contradictions that arrive later in life. You ironically need a very strong ego structure to let go of your ego.