But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God.
Sunday, May 17, 2026
a worthy goal....................
"When I am reading a book, whether wise of silly," Swift once wrote, "it seemeth to me to be alive and talking to me." The books he owned that have survived show that he constantly talked back, filling the margins with comments and objections, as he did when he referred to King William's morals. Describing this period ten years later, he said of himself, "The author was then young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. By the assistance of some thinking, and much conversation, he had endeavoured to strip himself of as many real prejudices as he could." That was his lifelong goal: to be faithful to firm principles, but only after thinking them through.
-Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
the complex interplay.................
The brain is the most complex biological assembly we know of. Its 80 billion neurons—nerve cells—communicate with each other to make trillions of connections, more that the number of particles in the known universe. These connections give rise to the sum of our experiences: all of our thoughts, desires, and beliefs; our emotions, changing moods, memory, even our heart rate and the contents of our dreams. How does this funny-looking, folded-in-on-itself, three-pound tangle of wires and blood vessels do all this, as well as orchestrate the complex interplay between emotion, memory, sound and healing that comes from music? And how does it allow us to remember music that we like, make playlists, and party likes it 1999?
-Daniel J. Levitin, I Heard There Was A Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
two ways....................
This I believed: there are two ways we could have gone, the way of the Titan, Prometheus, or the way of the dolphin. In the Promethean way we shape nature to suit us, in the way of the dolphin we let nature shape us to suit it. Everywhere there is evidence that we have chosen wrongly.
-John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village
Meanwhile, in Great Britain in 1781.....
Reckoned by talent alone, Burke should have had a Cabinet position himself. Yet he lost out. He was a commoner, indeed and Irish novus homo, at a time when Cabinets were small and almost invariably drawn from the peerage; and there may have been some taint from the well-known financial speculations of Will Burke and Richard Burke. But there wer perhaps two other important reasons in the background. Burke's relationship with Rockingham had faded somewhat, and the long years of often futile opposition had taken a toll on his public character. He was not merely passionate and outspoken but becoming tougher, somewhat embittered, and prone to rant. Over time he would acquire the nickname of 'the Dinner Bell', able to clear the Commons benches when he rose to speak. Colleagues who had admired him increasingly saw him as a bore . . . uncollegial . . . unsteady . . . too independent-minded . . . not someone to have round the Cabinet table. It cannot have helped either side that he was so often right.
-Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative
sow seeds......................
In cultivating loving-kindness, we train first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves. Rather than nurturing self-denigration, we begin to cultivate a clear-seeing kindness. Sometimes we feel good and strong. Sometimes we feel inadequate and weak. But our loving-kindness is unconditional. No matter how we feel, we can aspire to be happy. We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being, gradually becoming more aware of what causes happiness as well as what causes distress. Without loving-kindness for ourselves it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.
a long-term holding.............
Our problem is that we're ticker watchers of our own lives. Happiness (however we individually define it) is not best measured by looking at the ticker, zooming in and magnifying moment-by-moment or day-by-day movements. We would be better off thinking about our happiness as a long-term stock holding. We would do well to view our happiness through a wide-angle lens, striving for a long, sustained upward trend in our happiness stock, so it resembles the first Berkshire Hathaway chart.
a coven of initiates..............
I have attended too many seminars in some great universities which degenerated into a closed language game played by a coven of initiates who prized obscure self-referential congratulations over hones engagement with reality.
Choices................
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
-Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers
Inclinations...................
We are inclined to see history through the lives of great men. That inclination blinds us to the real complexity of politics, business and finance. So we find intentionality and design where there is only chance and improvisation; directness where there is obliquity.
-John Kay, Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly
Choosing...................
At the same time, we must take care to protect the sovereign domain of our personal tastes and proclivities as well as our sense of wonder. Choosing the right music for pleasure or for healing is never going to be one-size-fits-all affair. Even setting aside therapeutic uses, our tastes change over the course of a life or even a day. If I've just heard my favorite song six times in a row, I may not want to hear it again. The right music is whatever music is right for us at any given time and place.
-Daniel J. Levitin, I Heard There Was A Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
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