So many people are defined by what they do for a living, and some think it’s the only thing they’re good at! For example, if you’re a construction worker, when someone asks what you do, do you say, “I’m a construction worker and I build things”? If you’re a real estate agent, when someone asks […]
A Splendid Torch poem This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am […]
You want this to be over right? When can this end, when can life go back to normal? We’ve said this a million times to ourselves. Not just during the pandemic, but countless times in ordinary circumstances. When we were excited for Christmas to come already, when we were waiting for a friend who called […]
The secret from Marcus Aurelius for when we get criticized or insulted or judged by other people? He said we should look inside their souls. “Get inside him,” Marcus wrote. “Look at what sort of person he is. You’ll find you don’t need to strain to impress him.” His point was that too often we blindly […]
Varlam Shalamov was a brilliant writer who was sentenced in 1937 to years of hard labor in a Soviet gulag. What were his crimes? The same crimes that brought most people to those frozen hellholes: Finding themselves on the wrong side of a totalitarian regime. Random bad luck. Daring to criticize the powers that be. […]
Them: It’s impossible to describe rugby in just one clip, it simply can’t be d— Us: No problem.
A couple weeks ago, we talked about Fran Lebowitz’s secret to be immensely rich: books. They also happen to be a secret to empathy and understanding. There has been a big push lately for diversity and inclusion in books and television. This is important, obviously, because any system that does exclude voices is an unjust one. […]