juliana ong
@julianaong
juliana ong
In Pascal’s Pensées, he writes “And how shall [man] be happy? By finding something to occupy him, that shall divert him, and prevent him from seeing himself what he is. For if he saw himself as he is, he would be miserable indeed.”
Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do—take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.
Brian Eno
I’m no moral philosopher, but from a behavioral standpoint, a lot of what we consider “evil” is poor self-control and/or psychopathy, which both make some of us less likely to suppress acting on impulses coming from the darker side of our human nature.
I often joke that I make life incredibly difficult for myself, and these days I do genuinely say this in good humour. But there was a time when I often wondered why I couldn't just be happier with less—doing less, having less, being less.
Women are in the midst of a revolutionary reckoning with our ambitions. We’re not resigning en masse—because who can afford to quit her job in this economy?!—but we are trying to figure out a new set of goals and guidance for our professional lives. Thanks to long-simmering inequality and stubborn sexism, clarified by the pain of the pandemic, our ... See more
Ann Friedman • What Comes After Ambition?
it’s so easy to derail our own joy by looking around at someone else’s life or worse — the imaginary life we think we should have by now