on living
“And it’s not just the warnings of the dead you should heed; it’s also the warnings of the unborn. Genetically, there are far more people that could’ve been born instead of you than there are atoms in the universe. And yet, you are one of the mere 8 billion of us that are here now. To be alive is to possess an unfathomably rare gift; treat your
... See more“What is the opportunity cost? If I do this, if I go on this vacation, if I get this car, what am I turning down? By asking yourself this, and then consistently aiming to pick the thing that optimizes for what you most deeply value—it adds up. It makes life rich.
You don’t have to do things others do, or have things they have, at the expense of the
... See more“Remember this the next time you fall asleep to a TikTok playing on an endless loop: one day your heart will stop beating. The only thing that’s eternal is love.”
“Desire is a blueprint for expansion, a tug toward something that doesn’t yet exist but might. If we never desired, we would never build, never leave, never create. Imagine the opposite: a world where no one wanted more. No bridges, no love songs, no rebellions, no symphonies. Just flatness.”
“Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”
-Mary Oliver, Franz Marc’s Blue Horses
Storage
When I moved from one house to another
there were many things I had no room
for. What does one do? I rented a storage
space. And filled it. Years passed.
Occasionally I went there and looked in,
but nothing happened, not a single
twinge of the heart.
As I grew older the things I cared
about grew fewer, but were more
important. So one day
The Whole of It
If you step back, you can see it all
on the horizon: your mother’s death, the children
grown, their smooth eyelids crossed with veins
like saffron filaments. Further still, and see
your smiling grandmother treading the cold ocean,
tiny lakes in her collarbones, your great-
great grandchildren drawing their names
in the sand with
“To live like I’m kissing the universe on her temple.”