Embracing Life as it Is

For millennia, philosophers have understood that we don’t see life as it is; we see a version distorted by our hopes, fears, and other attachments. The Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.” Marcus Aurelius said, “Life itself is but what you deem it.” The quest for wisdom in many traditions begins with this insight. Early Buddhists and the Stoics, for example, developed practices for reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from the emotional torments of normal mental life.

The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way—when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness—they become less depressed, anxious, and angry. 

Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt writing in The Atlantic 

Patriotism & nationalism

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate of people other than your own comes first. -Charles de Gaulle

Mental illness: Out of the shadows

Mental illnesses account for more suffering and premature death in rich countries than heart disease and strokes, or than cancer. One study estimates that depression is 50% more disabling than angina, asthma or arthritis. Men with mental-health problems die 20 years earlier than those without, according to the British Medical Association, mostly from causes other than suicide. That is partly because mental illnesses make physical ones tougher to treat, and because sufferers often live less healthily. Research has linked even moderate levels of stress to lower life-expectancy. 

Half of adults with long-term mental conditions suffered their first symptoms before turning 14. Left untreated, even moderate conditions such as anxiety hurt school results and the prospects for employment. For serious conditions such as psychosis, prompt treatment greatly improves outcomes.

From The stigma of mental illness is fading in The Economist 

No one was paying attention

Hazel Motes walked along down town close to the store fronts but not looking in them. The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky. The stores…stayed open on Thursday nights so that people could have an extra opportunity to see what was for sale.

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

(Born March 25, 1925)

the tragic fate of most individuals

The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born, when we die, although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born. -Erich Fromm (born March 23, 1900)

Plenty of reason for doubt, anger and sadness

All of us — whatever our natural serotonin level — look around us and see plenty of reason for doubt, anger and sadness. A child dies, a woman is abused, a schoolyard becomes a killing field, a typhoon sweeps away the innocent. If we knew or felt the whole of human suffering, we would drown in despair. By all objective evidence, we are arrogant animals, headed for the extinction that is the way of all things. We imagine that we are like gods, and still drop dead like flies on the windowsill.

The answer to the temptation of nihilism is not an argument — though philosophy can clear away a lot of intellectual foolishness. It is the experience of transcendence we cannot explain, or explain away. It is the fragments of love and meaning that arrive out of the blue — in beauty that leaves a lump in your throat, in the peace and ordered complexity of nature, in the shadow and shimmer of a cathedral, in the unexplained wonder of existence itself. 

Michael Gerson, published in the Washington Post 

Look for the helpers

When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."  To this day, especially in times of "disaster" I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people.  – Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers, born March 20, 1928)

The Value of Community

I used to think that community was as simple as having friends who bring a lasagna when things fall apart and champagne when things go well. Who pick up your kids from school when you can’t. But I think community is also an insurance policy against life’s cruelty; a kind of immunity against loss and disappointment and rage. My community will be here for my family if I cannot be. And if I die, my kids will be surrounded people who know and love them, quirks and warts and oddities and all.   

Jenny Anderson writing in Quartz

A Successful Team needs Cohesive Personalities

A useful way to think about teams with the right mix of skills and personalities is to consider the two roles every person plays in a working group: a functional role, based on their formal position and technical skill, and a psychological role, based on the kind of person they are. Too often, organizations focus merely on the functional role and hope that good team performance somehow follows. This is why even the most expensive professional sports teams often fail to perform according to the individual talents of each player: There is no psychological synergy. A more effective approach focuses as much on people’s personalities as on their skills.

Dave Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic writing in Harvard Business Review  

Three rules of work

Three rules of work:  1. Out of clutter, find simplicity  2. From discord, find harmony  

3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.  –Albert Einstein, born March 14, 1879

struggling with insecurity

We struggle with insecurity because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. -Steven Furtick

The Mental Fog Begins to Lift

Over time, you begin to see hints and glimmers of a larger world outside the prison of your sadness. The conscious mind takes hold of some shred of beauty or love. And then more shreds, until you begin to think maybe, just maybe, there is something better on the far side of despair.

I have no doubt that I will eventually repeat the cycle of depression. But now I have some self-knowledge that can’t be taken away. I know that — when I’m in my right mind — I choose hope.

Michael Gerson, published in the Washington Post 

When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online

Jaime Putnam, a mom in Georgia, said she has started to be more mindful of the fact that many of her kids’ friends don’t yet know how much information about themselves is out there. Recently she saw on social media that one of her child’s friends got a puppy. She brought it up when she next saw him, and he looked at her, horrified. He had no idea how she had learned that seemingly private information. “It made me realize these kids don’t know what’s being posted all the time,” she said. Now she’s careful about what she reveals. “It kind of feels like you’re maybe crossing a line telling them everything you know about them.”

Taylor Lorenz writing in The Atlantic

The most important factor in a relationship

Communication, no matter how open, transparent and disciplined, will always break down at some point. Conflicts are ultimately unavoidable, and feelings will always be hurt.

And the only thing that can save you and your partner, that can cushion you both to the hard landing of human fallibility, is an unerring respect for one another, the fact that you hold each other in high esteem, believe in one another — often more than you each believe in yourselves — and trust that your partner is doing his/her best with what they’ve got.

Without that bedrock of respect underneath you, you will doubt each other’s intentions. You will judge their choices and encroach on their independence. You will feel the need to hide things from one another for fear of criticism. And this is when the cracks in the edifice begin to appear.

You must also respect yourself. Because without that self-respect, you will not feel worthy of the respect afforded by your partner. You will be unwilling to accept it and you will find ways to undermine it. You will constantly feel the need to compensate and prove yourself worthy of love, which will just backfire.

Respect for your partner and respect for yourself are intertwined. As a reader named Olov put it, “Respect yourself and your wife. Never talk badly to or about her. If you don’t respect your wife, you don’t respect yourself. You chose her – live up to that choice.”

Mark Manson writing in Business Insider