Olivia Dias Bagott

“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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We have become archivists of the self, I thought, curators of a life half-lived. Each countless photograph of a wonder, of dinner, of a view, of our children, of the utter banality of our everyday lives, was not a memento, a way of remembering the things we did, but instead evidence of the poverty of our engagement with the present moment. We frame... See more

Cynicism is a lack of faith in people; skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions. Cynics imagine humanity is awful; skeptics gather information about who they can trust. They hold on to beliefs lightly and learn quickly.

We shouldn’t just work less because it makes us better workers. We should work less because it makes us better people.

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.

“Walking lets you read the world – and much like the slow, contemplative mental processes involved in reading a book, the pace with which one moves through the world while walking allows for a different, deliberative kind of seeing. You notice more. You think more.”

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.

“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.”