Yufa

We spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. We snatch our freeze-frame of life from the simultaneity of existence holding on to the illusions of permanence, congruence, and linearity; of static selves and lives that unfold in sensical narratives. All the while, we mistake chance for choice, our labels and... See more

The frenetic worker. You keep on frantically working despite feeling overwhelmed and overloaded with work, overlooking your own needs in order to fulfil your work demands. In the words of the researchers: “The frenetic burnout type works increasingly harder, to the point of exhaustion, in search of success, and presents involvement, ambition and... See more

Facing you, soaring up from the depths of the valley, is the mighty, glacier-tipped peak, its smooth snowfields and hard-edged rock-faces touched at this moment with soft rose-colour by the last rays of the departing sun, all marvellously sharp against the clear, pale, transparent blue of the sky.According to our usual way of looking at it,... See more

Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett... See more

why love and loss have something elemental in common — each is “a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted,” one that “comes and goes on its own schedule… does not obey your plans, or your wishes [and] will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to.”

Vulnerability at its heart is the willingness to show up and be seen when you can’t control perception.[…]The one thing that we all have in common is… the paradox of vulnerability: that when I meet you, the very first thing I look for in you is vulnerability, and the very last thing I want to show you is my vulnerability.

Questions of meaning are a function of human life, but they are not native to the universe itself—meaning is not what we find, but what we create with the lives we live and the seeds we plant and the organizing principles according to which we sculpt our personhood.

“To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.”

The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly.