Reality is what is happening right now. It is the objective circumstance that is occurring without any meaning or judgment attached to it. And so what we experience is not reality itself but our perception of reality. Any meaning or thinking we give something is self-created and our choice. . . . the meaning we give something is the filter through which we see life.
-Joseph Nguyen, Don't Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is the Beginning & End of Suffering
I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics; but it is a fair subject for our deliberation to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled. In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign, and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign—the people—should possess intelligence.
-U. S. Grant, as lifted from here
Towards the end of his life, riven with chemotherapy, John threw fistfuls of his hair out his window, hoping they would commingle with the sheep wool floating about his neighbour Tim Conner's field. A few months later that hair was the lining of a chaffinch's nest where she laid her egg and reared her young.
Let us all have a nest with a lock or two of John's hair in it. God knows what could grow from it.
-Martin Shaw's introduction to John Moriarty's, A Hut at the Edge of the Village
My problem was that for my first ten years in school, I was at the back of the class. In the end, I came to see myself as my teachers saw me and as everyone in my class saw me. Without knowing it I made a compact with being last. And when, eventually, my exam results showed that I was first, I regarded it as a fraud. Nothing so trivial as a fact could give the lie to an old sense of self.
-John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village
I'm walking on Revere Beach outside of Boston where the low tide has pushed the ocean far away from the shore, and the wet sand is squishing between my toes. I came here for no particular reason—just to clear my head after two frantic weeks in the city surrounded by noise, construction, and crowds. A briny, sweet smell hangs over everything in the thick humidity of September. Warm air and wafts of cool breeze intermingle—it is T-shirt and jacket weather both at the same time.
-Daniel J. Levitin, I Heard There Was A Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
We may think of science and art as standing in opposition to one another, but they are bound by a common objective. Science seeks to find truth in the natural world; art seeks to find truth in the emotional world. Medicine fits somewhere in between, bridging science, art, and the emotions that move us toward the will to survive, to heal, to take our medicine, to exercise, and to put in motion all those things that keep us healthy.
-Daniel J. Levitin, I Heard There Was A Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
We all have a desire for transcendence. We want to reach higher and outward beyond our limitations so we can grow and do great things. That yearning is part of who we are; it’s behind the greatest art and music and scientific achievements. But transcendence that ignores the human condition isn’t enlightenment. It’s chaos. As we seek to transcend the limitations of the natural world, we should respect the boundaries that make us human.
-via the Rogue Highway substack
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.
-C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and open hearted enlightenment, our own wisdom.
We live in an era that often feels defined by great despair. War rages, lawlessness spreads, politicians betray their values, and it can seem, at times, that we are simply drowning in the uncertainty of it all.
And then something breaks through. For the first time in more than 50 years, we sent human beings to the moon and back. For 10 days, we watched as they beat a new path for exploration beyond anything we have ever known.
We watched them record detailed scientific observations of the lunar surface. We pored over their remarkable images of the far side of the moon. We saw them collect biological samples, test radiation-monitoring equipment, and conduct bone marrow experiments, all while traveling more than 24,000 miles per hour through the solar system.
For 10 days, we were captivated by achievements most of us could never imagine. And yet, the most compelling part of it all was not how foreign it felt, but how familiar.
-from The Free Press
When culture is in woeful crisis, the insights rarely come from parliament, senate, or committee, they tend to come from a hut at the edge of the village. Let’s go there. There is tremendous, unexpected hope waiting.
-John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy, the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves—to our fellow men.
-Franklin Roosevelt, from his first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
Scarcity dictates what’s meaningful.
When you are alone, a relationship feels meaningful.
When you’re in a relationship, time to yourself feels meaningful.
When you are overworked, time off feels meaningful.
When you have plenty of downtime, work feels meaningful.
The scarcity never gets solved, it simply changes form.
-Mark Manson, from this episode
"What have you learned from the Grant Study men?" Vaillant's response: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."
The human mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild. But whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall, accumulate, and will reproduce their own kind.
Just as the gardener cultivates the plot, keeping it free from weeds and cultivating the flowers and fruits which are required, so may we tend the garden of our mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts.
-James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
In other words, so far, AI is replacing tasks, not jobs.
-Noah Smith, thinking about the future of work
272. One of my goals is to be an ambitious 85-year-old.
273: Life is a series of continuing education classes.
-Michael Wade, Random Thoughts: Brief Reflections and Moments of Clarity
Elias Schwartz repairs shoes. He's short and round and bald and single and middle-aged and Jewish. "An old-fashioned cobbler," says he, nothing more, nothing less. I happen to be convinced that he is really the 145th reincarnation of the Haiho Lama.
See, the Haiho Lama died in 1937, and the monks of the Sa-skya monastery have been searching for forty years for his reincarnation without success. The New York Times carried the story last summer. The article noted that the Lama would be recognized by the fact that he went around saying and doing wise things in small, mysterious ways, and that he would be doing the will of God without understanding why.
Through some unimaginable error in the cosmic switching yards, the Haiho Lama has been reincarnated as Elias Schwartz. I have no doubts about it.
My first clue came when I took my old Bass loafers in for total renewal. The works. Elias Schwartz examined them with intense care. With regret in his voice he pronounced them not worthy of repair. I accepted the unwelcome judgment. Then he took my shoes, disappeared into the back of the shop, and I waited and wondered. He returned with my shoes in a stapled brown bag. For carrying, I thought.
When I opened the bag at home that evening, I found two gifts and a note. In each shoe, a chocolate-chip cookie wrapped in waxed paper. And these words in the note: "Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it. Elias Schwartz."
The Haiho Lama strikes again.
And the monks will have to go on looking. Because I'll never tell—we need all the Lamas here we can get.
-Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
Faithfulness is not blind belief; it consists of steadfastly practicing the principle of shunning those things which are not within your control, leaving them to be worked out according to the natural system of responsibilities. Cease trying to anticipate or control events. Instead accept them with grace and intelligence.
-Epictetus, A Manual for Living
Once you understand the backstory, you realize that the New York Times story is not really about flight at all but about how elites and credentialed “experts” mistake their own failures for the boundaries of possibility.
-and the rest of the story is here
God loved the world so much that he gave his son and he gave him to a virgin, the blessed virgin Mary, and she, the moment he came in her life, went in haste to give him to others. And what did she do then? She did the work of the handmaid, just so. Just spread that joy of loving to service. And Jesus Christ loved you and loved me and he gave his life for us, and as if that was not enough for him, he kept on saying: Love as I have loved you, as I love you now, and how do we have to love, to love in the giving. For he gave his life for us. And he keeps on giving, and he keeps on giving right here everywhere in our own lives and in the lives of others.
It was not enough for him to die for us, he wanted that we loved one another, that we see him in each other, that’s why he said: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.
-Mother Teresa, from her 1979 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.
-Abraham Maslow, as cut-and-pasted from A Theory of Human Motivation
Here's a wonderful way to avoid an argument—simply ask questions. Instead of jumping in and disagreeing before you know any more about the subject under discussion and the other party, ask the person to state his case, specifically, and to define his terms. People who like to argue, and will at the drop of a word on any subject, are people who enjoy ruffling the feelings of others. Willard Sloan once wrote an article entitled, "Arguments Don't Win Friends" in which he points out that arguments are useless and largely ridiculous. They're more a matter of temper than temperate conversation and discussion.
-Earl Nightingale, as excerpted from The Essence of Success
In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.
-Robert Louis Stevenson, as found here
The essence of God does NOT include human frailties such as partiality, controllingness, duality, judgmentalism, vindictive retaliation, wrath, righteous anger, resentment, vanity, limitation, arbitrariness, revenge, jealousy, vulnerability, or locality.
-David R. Hawkins, Spiritual Power and Integrity
Your economic future is not going to be determined by the economy, but rather your own philosophy.
-Jim Rohn, as culled from Leading an Inspired Life
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