Jesse Singal tweets:
In his same Tweet Thread: "Stop fucking reducing people to their skin color. It's gross and immoral behavior, and it's crazy to me that it's not only allowed but incentivized in so many liberal spaces."
This episode serves as a spotlight on the deplorable behavior of Abigail Disney.
I was minding my own business yesterday when a Swedish book publishing company asked whether it could use one of my photos (that it found on Flickr) on the cover of a new book. It's a photo I took at the Grand Canyon in 2014. The day I took this photo seems so long ago now. I have had a few other requests like this. I'm happy to make my photos available for small projects without payment, asking only for attribution. This delightful request reminded me an important principle: There is often a long time lag between the things we do and the moments where those little things gain greater meaning. Almost everything difficult that I do today would have been impossible without years or decades of cultivating friendships, work-relationships, skill-sets and hard-earned experience. That's because "compounding" is at play far outside of the financial realm. Compounding is one of the most important and least appreciated principles in our lives. Many of my recent happy occurrences are built off off dozens or hundreds of little things, many of them far in the past. It's not easy to see where the things we do today will lead. It might be worth our time to celebrate all the moments in our lives, including the small moments.
Excellent advice and excellent story that I found on HiExistence:
"In 2006, a group of students at Xavier High School in New York City were given an interesting assignment: to write their favorite authors and try to persuade them to visit the school. Five students opted to write to none other than Kurt Vonnegut." Here is his response:"
November 5, 2006
Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!
Kurt Vonnegut
Such a beautiful concept: Wabi-sabi
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent throughout all forms of Japanese art.
Oh, and one more concept from Japan: Ikigai.
One of my favourite Japanese words another is 生き甲斐 (ikigai) known as the reason of being. It’s your life’s purpose, it’s what inspires you and makes you want to get out of bed everyday.
I spotted a well considered list of advice on Common Sense - Bari Weiss' website. It's a list by Kevin Kelly (Founding Editor of Wired). I'm posting it because it offers lots of good advice that I wish I had known when I was younger. Further, I have not been able to write new chapters on "How to be a Human Animal" lately. My day job and other (mostly good) obligations are keeping me away from this project. I hope get back on track in a couple more weeks . . .
Here are a few excerpts from Kelly's list:
• Three things you need: The ability to not give up something till it works, the ability to give up something that does not work, and the trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two.• When public speaking, pause frequently. Pause before you say something in a new way, pause after you have said something you believe is important, and pause as a relief to let listeners absorb details.
• There is no such thing as being “on time.” You are either late or you are early. Your choice.
• Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.
• The best way to get a correct answer on the internet is to post an obviously wrong answer and wait for someone to correct you.
• You’ll get 10x better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.
• Making art is not selfish; it’s for the rest of us. If you don’t do your thing, you are cheating us.
• Spend as much time crafting the subject line of an email as the message itself because the subject line is often the only thing people read.
• Don’t wait for the storm to pass; dance in the rain.
• When checking references for a job applicant, employers may be reluctant or prohibited from saying anything negative, so leave or send a message that says, “Get back to me if you highly recommend this applicant as super great.” If they don’t reply take that as a negative.
• Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.