The brain devotes lots of effort to mapping where our loved ones are while they are alive, so that we can find them when we need them. And the brain often prefers habits and predictions over new information. But it struggles to learn new information that cannot be ignored, like the absence of our loved one.[…]Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful... See more
Throughout life, our habits, beliefs, and ideas evolve beyond recognition. Our physical and social environments change. Almost all of our cells are replaced. Yet we remain, to ourselves, “who” “we” “are.”
An interview petrifies us in time, then lives on forever, the thoughts of bygone selves quoted back to us across the eons of our personal evolution — a strange and discomposing taxidermy diorama of life that is no longer living.
The greatest challenge, of course, is the perennial challenge of the human mind — how to integrate seemingly contradictory needs or ideas in such a way that they coexist harmoniously, perhaps even magnify each other, rather than cancel each other out.
I am a mess of contradictions. There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman… I want to be in charge and respected and in control, but I want to surrender, completely, in certain aspects of my life.[…]My success, such as it is, is supposed to be... See more