Olivia Dias Bagott

I want to know and be able to explain my personal taste, not just accept one that’s been spoonfed to me because of a pay-for-play scheme at Spotify, for instance. I don’t want my behavior modified by a social media empire; I want to make all my own mistakes.

“Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.”

“The proliferation of devices surrounding us at all times may help us ‘get in touch’ with other people, sure, but they impede our ability to get in touch with ourselves. A ‘touch’ screen would indeed seem to promise something tactile and real, but they leave us cold, tepid and listless. Something is deeply wrong when we sext the same way we order a

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I want to be bored this year. I want to swim in unstructured hours that allow me to catch up with myself, where I can realise thoughts I didn’t know I had; to let my imagination roam and bloom into shapes only possible without the constant distraction of a screen blurring my vision.

As we navigate this strange and anxious world, choosing joy becomes more than a personal act of resilience – it becomes a radical gesture of hope. In an era where cynicism so often masquerades as wisdom, the decision to remain constructive, to trust in human potential, is itself a quiet but powerful form of resistance.

Don’t just resist cynicism – fight it actively. Fight it in yourself, for this ungainly beast lies dormant in each of us, and counter it in those you love and engage with, by modeling its opposite. Cynicism often masquerades as nobler faculties and dispositions, but is categorically inferior. Unlike that great Rilkean life-expanding doubt, it is a ... See more

Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature.

Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus – an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.