Sonya Sukalski
@sonyasukalski
Retired in 2022. I enjoy writing, gardening, hiking, biking, and new ideas.
Sonya Sukalski
Belonging : Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us . Because this yearning is so primal , we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval , which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging , but often barriers to it . Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic ,
... See moreMy cancer would go into remission, sparing my life, but the epiphanies sparked by this personal confrontation with death have stuck with me. They’ve led me to reshuffle my priorities and to totally change my life. I spend far more time with my wife and daughters, and moved to be closer to my aging mother. I have dramatically cut down my presence on
... See moreKai-Fu Lee • AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
Insight from someone living it!
Belonging feels like you are seen and heard. You feel alive. You’ve been invited into any given group, and you know you can be honest with the people in it.
Stanford Engineering Staff • Design to make a difference: How do we foster a culture of belonging?
Lost in a featureless wasteland of my own mortality, and finding no traction in the reams of scientific studies, intracellular molecular pathways, and endless curves of survival statistics, I began reading literature again: Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, Woolf, Kafka,
... See morePaul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
I think that most people who say, “Everything happens for a reason,” can fuck off to a frigid cave,
Rob Delaney • A Heart That Works
Every cancer doctor has said some version of, “we don’t know what causes cancer. No two cancers are exactly the same. Certain genes are turned on or off, and we don’t know why.” They also say, “There will be plenty of things to worry about later, so don’t try to do all the worrying right now. We work as a team during the transplant, and when you are in the hospital, because there are better outcomes all around.” What they don’t say is hopefully the one with cancer also has a team. We certainly do, and I have taken a deep dive into gratitude because of it. The neighbors bringing: gluten free everything bagels, roasted chicken, potatoes and carrots, stuffed peppers, vegan chili, vegan chickpea stew, cookies, hangar steak with mushrooms, green beans, broccoli, polenta… Friends checking in, sending poetry, funny and inspiring videos, stories, messages of encouragement. Family checking in much more than usual, offering to come and help with the care-giver responsibilities, helping with the every day chores, telling me about new resources. Friends taking me to tea, organizing a meet at a nearby brewpub, offering for us to stay at their house near the hospital, bringing pumpkins to carve, and offering to come sing Christmas songs.
People underestimate compounding and long games. When people think “that’s not possible”, “you can’t do that”, “that won’t work”, it’s often because they’re imagining something like 5 years, 10 years. Things get very different when you have 50 year plans
Visakan Veerasamy • visakanv's 50yr "plan" for global nerd network [wip]
It may be that the most defining characteristic of our times is that, again, walls and weapons feature as prominently now as they once did in medieval times. Porous borders are understood in some quarters to be areas of threat and certain chaos, and whether real or imagined, enforced separation is posited as the solution. Walls, ammunition — they
... See more“Of all countries in the world, America has taken greatest advantage of association and has applied this powerful means of action to the greatest variety of objectives.” --Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political philosopher, visited the United States in the early 1830s and was impressed by the ways Americans associated with one another.