Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
– Rumi, mystic Persian poet (1207-1273)
Love that lights the sky
Even after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth, ‘you owe me’.
Look what happens with a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.
– Hafez, mystic Persian poet (ca 1325-1390)
Purpose changes everything
Practice respect, harness diversity, enable inclusion
“We need to treat other people the way they want to be treated. Which means we have to ask.”
– Kim Katrin Milan
So much wisdom in this TED talk by Tiq Milan and Kim Katrin Milan. So much to learn from.
Every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift
“I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.”
– Steven Pinker, cognitive psychologist and linguist
What is your trajectory?
“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”
– James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones
Skaterpark Pontresina.
fulfilment vs happiness
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The Ancient Greeks resolutely did not believe that the purpose of life was to be happy; they proposed that it was to achieve Eudaimonia, a word which has been best translated as ‘fulfilment’.
What distinguishes happiness from fulfilment is pain. It is eminently possible to be fulfilled and – at the same time – under pressure, suffering physically or mentally, overburdened and, quite frequently, in a tetchy mood. This is a psychological nuance that the word happiness makes it hard to capture; for it is tricky to speak of being happy yet unhappy or happy yet suffering. However, such a combination is readily accommodated within the dignified and noble-sounding letters of Eudaimonia.
The word encourages us to trust that many of life’s most worthwhile projects will at points be quite at odds with contentment and yet worth pursuing nevertheless. Properly exploring our professional talents, managing a household, keeping a relationship going, creating a new business venture or engaging in politics… none of these goals are likely to leave us cheerful and grinning on a quotidian basis. They will, in fact, involve us in all manner of challenges that will deeply exhaust and ennervate us, provoke and wound us. And yet we will perhaps, at the end of our lives, still feel that the tasks were worth undertaking. Through them, we’ll have accessed something grander and more interesting than happiness: we’ll have made a difference.
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The School of Life, full article and video here.
Bend, not break
The bamboo that bends is stonger than the oak that resists.
– Japanese proverbe
Brush painting by Rosetsu, Rietberg Museum.
Know thyself
Inscribed in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
– Buddhha, Socrates, Harari
So much to learn from prickly porcupines…
“Anger is naturally triggered when we feel an obstacle to meeting our needs. How do we honor the intelligence within anger, but not get hijacked into emotional reactivity that creates suffering in our individual and collective lives? This talk explores the U-turn that enables us to offer a healing attention to the feelings and unmet needs under anger. Once present with our inner life, we are able to respond to those around us with wisdom, empathy and true strength.”
Awakening through anger – the U-turn to freedom: podcast by Tara Brach