“Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central—something…
Death twitches my ear.“Live’” He says, “I am coming.“— Virgil The twitch is there, reminding me to make the most of each day. You may have noticed a lean towards Stoicism early on in this blog. Stoicism celebrates every moment of life, because we remind ourselves that infinity is calling. So decide what to be…
“Our life is also what we have not dared to do … what escaped us.” — Javier Marias Javier Marias passed away on September 11th, triggering a series of tributes to a productive literary life. This quote stood out for me, for all the reasons you might expect from this particular blogger. If there’s a…
“Habit is a rope. We weave a thread every day, and eventually we can’t break it.” — Thomas Mann “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle This business of repeatedly doing is leading somewhere, with our destination highly dependent on what we repeatedly do. Such…
“Days to come stand in front of uslike a row of lighted candles—golden, warm, and vivid candles.Days gone by fall behind us,a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;the nearest are smoking still,cold, melted, and bent.”— C. P. Cavafy When you think about it, our days gone by are a stack of previous lives, somewhat resembling us…
Black-eyed Susan’s once again dominate, staking a claim on more of the garden every year if you let them. I mostly let them. They remind me of conversations with a favorite gardener who’s moved on, which means they’ll forever receive favorable treatment in my garden. Crickets receive no such favorable treatment, but we peacefully coexist…
“You want to become a clearer thinker, you need to spend more time alone with your own thoughts, and keep writing every day.” — @Orangebook How do we reach clarity? Don’t we have to wrestle with conflicting thoughts to see which emerges more persuasive than the rest? The vehicle to clarity might be walking or…
“Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” — Henry David Thoreau “If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy “Happiness is transient, but meaning abides.” — James Hollis We are all in the process of becoming whatever it is we’ll evolve into next. Blogging documents much of my own…
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” — Franz Kafka We are the authors of our own souls, yet most of us squander our agency and slide into compliance with expectations and deferment of…
“We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person…
