It’s easy to make our way through life without paying much attention to the world around us. We have our focus, our priorities, our passions, and they’re important. But they often prevent us from looking around and noticing more of what’s going on.
Someday never comes.
This might be one of the most hackneyed quotes / thoughts / aphorisms the old share with the young.
The problem is, it’s true.
Many people believe they understand themselves.
Some might be right, or close to it. However, many are quite mistaken.
Shame is so much more pervasive than I’d ever realized. It’s everywhere.
When we think of shame, we think first of behaviours others have done that they “should” be ashamed of. Choices they’ve made, actions they’ve taken, that at the time were obviously “bad” (for some definition of “bad”).
It’s not always the case that they were obviously bad at the time, but certainly in hindsight it’s clear, and from that hindsight, we see shame.
It’s one of the simplest rules of thumb when deciding … well, just about anything.
Will this make the world a better place?
Even if it’s by a tiny amount, it’s worthy of thought.
I struggle with homophobes.
I have a difficult time understanding their problem. Two people love each other and they happen to have the same genitalia.
So what?
Sleep is underrated.
Sleep is also very frustrating.
Years ago, I regularly felt frustrated because sleeping seemed like such a waste of time. Eight hours doing nothing? REALLY? There’s so much to see and do and accomplish. Why do we have to waste time sleeping?
Most people we meet are significantly less secure and less self-confident than we imagine.
👉🏻👉🏻 Significantly. 👈🏻👈🏻
It’s both surprising and sad how often I run into people with unwarranted low self-esteem, or just an inordinately negative picture of themselves or their abilities.
Fault finding is so easy.
I’ll even say society encourages it.
Mass media looks for any opportunity to call out a politician, celebrity, or other person of note for their mistakes and hypocrisy. It’s become almost a game. It’s definitely a key component of every political campaign.
Hubris:
Excessive pride, presumption or arrogance (originally toward the gods).
“It now appears that the world is filled with people who believe that everyone should be interested in everything they have to say about anything – people who tweet, you might call them. I find this so astonishing, my own hubris pales in comparison.”
– Alice McDermott.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room, shall we?
65 is one of those round-but-not-round numbers when applied to age. I’m going to use it as an artificial milestone, and as an excuse kick off my little thought exercise.
65 thoughts exercise, actually. The first one, tomorrow. (Not that this isn’t a thought, but … you know.)
Fair warning, my personal blog is about to get busy. Beginning July 6 there’ll be a daily post, and a daily email for those subscribed to the notifications, at least through September 10.
Here’s what’s going on…
To my foreign family and friends.
No, I can’t explain it.
The US was once the land of opportunity and freedom. Now it seems the home for hypocrisy and hate.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but one of the most important skills I got from my education was the ability to find answers.
I wish education in general was more focused on that skill. Rather than accumulating (and, gak, testing for) knowledge, teach the skill set required to acquire knowledge as needed; a kind of “just in time” skill. When you need to know something, you know how to find it.
I wanted to give you a heads-up about some changes I’m making to my personal blog.
Email subscribers: you get to hear about it first.
Polina Pompliano’s The Profile just celebrated five years of publishing consistently.
… 263 Sunday emails, 100 Profile Dossiers, and thousands of longform profiles.
Quite the achievement.
Coincidentally, I also celebrated a five-year anniversary with one of my publications, Not All News is Bad.
I realized if I had a super-power, it might be consistency.
Over the last few years I’ve found myself not just subscribing to an assortment of news and other publications, but actually paying for the privilege.
In the spirit of full transparency for my own publications influenced by these choices, here’s a list of everything I’m actually paying cold hard cash for.
As you might imagine I read, skim, and scan (let’s just call that all “consume”, shall we?) a lot of content as I pull together 7 Takeaways each week. I do the same for Not All News is Bad, for that matter. (I do it for Ask Leo! as well, but that’s different for the purposes of this discussion.)
Some items call to me, and I’ve never been quite sure why. If you’d asked me my criteria I would have said I have no idea, but, like porn, I just know it when I see it.
As I was meditating this morning one of the reasons made itself known.
(Once again, sorry for the delays between postings. Life. If interested and if you’re not already there I have been sending out 7 Takeaways every week. Generally not my writing, but I do share some thoughts on each takeaway I collect.)
A friend is dealing with one of life’s issues, to put it vaguely. It’s led me to notice our friends and acquaintances often fall into two categories. It’s important to acknowledge them.
It’s funny how we assign meaning and even sentimentality to inanimate objects.
Consider the mug shown above: it’s actually quite meaningful to me. So much so that at one point I actually stopped using it for fear of breaking it. As a result, I never saw it and it remained in a relatively obscure location.
Last year I came to the conclusion that that was kinda silly, and placed it back into service.
This morning I realized that it’s not just the mug we set aside for some odd perception of safety and desired permanence.