Thought provoking

Instead of responding to our emotions impulsively, we can observe them and then question them. Is this helpful? Is this truthful? Is this coming from a place of clear perspective, or a lingering past wound?

Brianna Wiest • When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal

Sometimes the gate looks like it's like 5,000 feet tall, but you don't realize it's only 5ft wide. Just like walk around it. You don't have to be so prolific.

-Jon Bellion on Zach Sang Show

/// 100 QUESTIONS /// to gain clarity via Alex Morris:

Why are we doing this?
1. Ask that of yourself and the team with regularity.
What’s the simplest explanation?
What reaction should all the creative achieve?
What’s your most controversial opinion?
What little frictions exist that might bleed out the work if allowed to compound?
Are you solving a

Only people can be free. If we believe something else makes us free, we never learn what we must do.

The moment you believe that freedom is given, it is gone

Timothy Snyder • On Freedom

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 glass twitter.com

A sign of wisdom is choosing not to believe everything you think. A mark of emotional intelligence is choosing not to internalize everything you feel.

Thoughts and emotions are possibilities to ponder, not facts to accept. We don’t always invite them in, but we do decide whether they deserve to stay.

It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.

Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

We say that a symbol stands for something, but all too often a symbol merely stands in for something. The American flag is supposed to stand for freedom, but it can very easily stand in for freedom. In singing the anthem, we treat its values as permanent, or as if they were enacted by song. But praise is not practice.