Reads
You don’t see many women baffled about why history lacks more women artists or novelists or stand-up comics. How dare anyone say that an entire group of people aren’t funny if for millennia they aren’t allowed to try writing jokes until they’ve done all your laundry, cooked all your food, and put your children to bed?
Ada Calhoun, Also A Poet
Doll collection from Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective, Art Institute of Chicago
I stand tall in my agnosticism, because the essence of it is not merely not-knowing, but something far more challenging and infinitely more intriguing: the magnificent oxymoron inherent in the concept of unknowability. This is the acknowledgement that not everything may be knowable, and that not all questions have definitive answers - certainly not ones as crudely put as the existence or non-existence of God. At its best, however, agnosticism goes further: it takes a spirited delight in not knowing.
Lesley Hazleton, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto
For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour - disdaining even to wear a watch - he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or a stroll along the embankment. After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? When all was said and done, the endeavors that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
The world is very beautiful and very wonderful. Life can be very easy when love is your way of life. You can be loving all the time. This is your choice. You may not have a reason to love, but you can love because to love makes you so happy. Love in action only produces happiness. Love will give you inner peace. It will change your perception of everything.
Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Toltec Book of Wisdom
The Net is making us smarter, in other words, only if we define intelligence by the Net’s own standards. If we take a broader and more traditional view of intelligence – if we think about the depth of our thought rather than just its speed – we have to come to a different and considerably darker conclusion.
Nicholas Carr, The Shallows
What comes naturally to me? For just a moment, ignore what you have been taught. Ignore what society has told you. Ignore what others expect of you. Look inside yourself and ask, ‘What feels natural to me? When have I felt alive? When have I felt like the real me?’ No internal judgements or people-pleasing. No second-guessing or self-criticism. Just feelings of engagement and enjoyment. Whenever you feel authentic and genuine, you are headed in the right direction.
James Clear, Atomic Habits
It has a happy ending, but that's because I insist on happy endings; I would insist on happy beginnings, too, but that's not necessary because all beginnings are intrinsically happy, in my opinion. What about middles, you may ask. Middles are a problem. Middles are perhaps the major problem of contemporary life.
Nora Ephron, Heartburn
When I stand back, in my middle years...in my grief, in my endless and aching love of humanity, this is what I know. This darkness we’ve found ourselves in might just be the very thing that reconnects us to life again. It’s taken me to my ultimate edge. I lost friends on this journey - which I had to accept is part of the growth deal. But these strange times that we can’t quite believe are here, also demanded that I step into my biggest, most alive self. It’s made me look around and love life in a more intimate way. It’s made me question what matters and hunt down - in something of a kamikaze fashion - my true north. I had to find my resilience, my grit. I had to come to terms with how appropriate and necessary my rage is. I stopped apologizing…and I realized perhaps it had to get this terrifying and lonely before I - we - could connect as deeply and truly as I - we - hope we will.
In Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Hermine says to Harry: ‘Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.’ It’s a crackin’ truth.
Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life
We internalize the unhelpful voices because at certain key moments in the past they sounded compelling. The authority figures repeated their messages over and over until they got lodged in our own way of thinking. Part of becoming a good teacher means altering how we speak to ourselves - and then, in turn, others. To do this we need to encounter equally convincing and confident, but also helpful and constructive, varieties of voices over long periods - and take care to internalize them: the voices of a friend, a therapist, an author or kindly teacher.
School of Life, Calm
There is no shortcut for setting boundaries and knowing your limits. The longer you let the fear of other people's judgement or reactions dictate your decisions, the more devastating the destruction is in the long run. That is precisely why boundaries are the foundation of real self-care.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, Real Self-Care
Of Little Women: "It anticipated realism by twenty or thirty years; just as Jane Austen anticipated it by at least a hundred years. For women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men." G. K. Chesterton
From Scribbles, Sorrows, and Russet Leather Boots: The Life of Louisa May Alcott by Liz Rosenberg
In kinder, more mature relationships, we’d make allowances for each other’s occasional times of regression. Part of what it is to love another person is to be accommodating and generous to these needs. Ideally, the strange behavior around regression is itself a sign that someone feels safe enough with you (or you with them) to be pathetic for a time. To love another person isn’t only to admire their strengths and see what’s great about them. It should also involve nursing and protecting them in their less impressive moments. To ask for a hug is not simply to request a physical embrace. It has a bigger meaning as an admission that one is not coping and as a plea for protection and support. A hug is a symbol of what we are missing in our hypercompetitive, individualistic culture: a positive admission of our dependence and fragility.
School of Life, Calm
To ensure that we will never come face to face with ourselves, we develop addictions. We are used to categorizing addictions chiefly in reference to drugs or alcohol. But this lets many of us off too lightly. Addiction isn’t limited to a dependence on a chemical. An addiction is simply anything that guarantees that we will never have to come to terms with ourselves, that promises to ward off uncomfortable or dreadful inner realizations. Conceived of like this, a host of other types of addiction come into view: we might get addicted to doing exercise, reading football scores, worrying about insurance or going to work. An addiction can’t be spotted by what it makes us do, simply by what it prevents us from feeling.
School of Life, How Modern Media Destroys Our Minds
When you walk, instead of drive, you are also, very visibly, not buying into the all-supreme imperative of the car and all the isolation, disconnect and ecological travesty that comes with it. You take to the streets. You pass traffic jams, you weave your way, your feet agile and moving to spirited beats…you arrive on foot and you are already in your body, vibrant and present and really quite defiant.
Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life
Katie Sturino, Body Talk
School of Life, How Modern Media Destroys Our Minds
