Jay Matthews

“The word “poverty” was a fine, somehow noble word. It evoked an image out of old schoolbooks: poor but clean. Cleanliness made the poor socially acceptable. Social progress meant teaching people to be clean; once the indigent had been cleaned up, “poverty” became a title of honour. Even in the eyes of the poor, the squalor of destitution applied... See more

That is the predicate of the slender, poetic 1993 novel  Einstein's Dreams by physicist Alan Lightman — a book about time and the tricks we play on ourselves to bear our transience, a book that does for time what Alain de Botton’s  The Course of Love does for love: punctuating a fictional world with philosophical quickenings, thought experiments,... See more

The takeaway is that you can take it slow. Creating online, doing your own thing, and dabbling here and there might dramatically expand your possibilities in the future.

On anxiety or curiosity as responses to a partner's 'other'-ness

I mean, faced with the unknown of our partners, we can either be anxious — and this is true with the unknown of life. We can be anxious, we can want to close the gap, we can want to seek the familiar in that space, or we can leave that space open and respond

to it with curiosity. And

... See more

As these standards became articulated and expressed more clearly, both in briefings to elite high school college admission counselors and in the results of the admissions themselves, ambitious high school students (and their families) learned how to perform them. They wouldn’t seek to be student body president or editor-in-chief of the school... See more

It also becomes a bit more performative. Which again is fine. Nothing wrong with that. But we shouldn't hide away from this fact.

wild to think people are out there just... winging it 😅