Heat & Light

It is fairly easy to produce heat, but very tough to produce light. -Jim Lehrer

Weeping

It is mentally ill to weep over fakery on the screen and not cry over the reality on the street. (unknown)

We can be too clever for our own good

Unthinking is the ability to apply years of learning at the crucial moment by removing your thinking self from the equation. Its power is not confined to sport: actors and musicians know about it too, and are apt to say that their best work happens in a kind of trance. Thinking too much can kill not just physical performance but mental inspiration. Bob Dylan, wistfully recalling his youthful ability to write songs without even trying, described the making of “Like a Rolling Stone” as a “piece of vomit, 20 pages long”. It hasn’t stopped the song being voted the best of all time.

In less dramatic ways the same principle applies to all of us. A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense. A study of shopping behaviour found that the less information people were given about a brand of jam, the better the choice they made. When offered details of ingredients, they got befuddled by their options and ended up choosing a jam they didn’t like.

If a rat is faced with a puzzle in which food is placed on its left 60% of the time and on the right 40% of the time, it will quickly deduce that the left side is more rewarding, and head there every time, thus achieving a 60% success rate. Young children adopt the same strategy. When Yale undergraduates play the game, they try to figure out some underlying pattern, and end up doing worse than the rat or the child. We really can be too clever for our own good.

Ian Leslie, writing in The Economist

Giving advice

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted. -Aeschylus

time to cheer

Encourage others and cheer for them. Having an appreciation for how amazing the people around you are leads to good places – productive, fulfilling, peaceful places. So be happy for those who are making progress. Cheer for their victories. Be thankful for their blessings, openly. What goes around comes around, and sooner or later the people you’re cheering for will start cheering for you.

Marc and Angel Chernoff

Build yourself a great story

How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you're wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it's tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made.

In the end, we are our choices.

Build yourself a great story.

Jeff Bezos, speaking to the Princeton Class of 2010 (watch the video here)

when we have lost our way

It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meanings of love.

Rollo May

the right person

Instead of focusing on the search for the right person, focus on becoming the right person.

The important Tool of Silence

Your most important tool when a fellow human being is in distress is silence. Don’t be afraid of silence; learn to hold it. Although it may feel uncomfortable to you, it won’t to them. They’re working through painful thoughts and feelings, so don’t rush them. People will start opening up if you don’t interrupt.  

Moya Sarner writing in The Guardian

a time of destruction

In a time of destruction, create something. -Maxine Hong Kingston

The American nones

Reconciling the overwhelming sense of life’s importance with the universe’s ostensible indifference to human suffering is hard.

Although belief in God is no panacea for these problems, religion is more than a theism. It is a bundle: a theory of the world, a community, a social identity, a means of finding peace and purpose, and a weekly routine. Those, like me, who have largely rejected this package deal, often find themselves shopping à la carte for meaning, community, and routine to fill a faith-shaped void. Their politics is a religion. Their work is a religion. Their spin class is a church. And not looking at their phone for several consecutive hours is a Sabbath.

American nones may well build successful secular systems of belief, purpose, and community. But imagine what a devout believer might think: Millions of Americans have abandoned religion, only to re-create it everywhere they look.

Derek Thompson writing in The Atlantic 

to make a man covet a thing

In order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. -Mark Twian

The path to sainthood

The path to sainthood goes through adulthood. There are no quick and easy shortcuts. An identity must be established before it can be transcended. One must find one’s self before one can lose it.   

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

one step

If you're running a 26-mile marathon, remember that every mile is run one step at a time. If you are writing a book, do it one page at a time. -Charles Swindoll

It's over

What you knew, what you understood, and what you trusted about everything is OVER. Because everything’s changed. It’s over. That’s the first truth.

The second truth.. is that it’s just beginning—if you choose to be remarkable. Why not choose to show up in your life and then your profession with a kind of engagement and energy and commitment and passion that says, “I can do it again! And I can’t wait.” Why wouldn’t you choose that?

If you say, “I don’t know,” then look at your beliefs. Because chances are someone told you long ago that you couldn’t do it. You weren’t tall enough. You weren’t smart enough. You weren’t rich enough. You weren’t the right color.

Don’t pay a bit of attention to that. You are in the process every day of becoming. Take your hand off the doorknob and say, “Now.”

Roger Fransecky, The Apogee Group

a dog barks

If you stop every time a dog barks, your road will never end. - Arabian Proverb

Why couples start to look alike

It’s folk wisdom that couples in long and happy relationships look more and more alike as the years go by. Peer closely at those old photographs, and you’ll see that the couples haven’t actually grown similar noses or chins. Instead, they have reflected, each other’s expressions so frequently and so accurately that hundreds of tiny muscle attachments to their skin have reshaped their faces to mirror their union. How this happens gives us a window on one of the most fascinating recent discoveries about the brain, and about how we come to “feel felt” by one another. 

 Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight

Carl Jung's patients

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among [those] in the second half of life-that is to say over 35—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. –Carl Jung

Celebrating what is right

If we celebrate what is right in our lives, we gain the perspective to deal with some of the things that are wrong in our lives.

Take a Closer Look

This lovely furniture looks like cozy quarters.  But you won't findthe furniture taking up space in someone's living room. The trees in the background offer a hint that something's amiss. These items are tucked away in a Seattle park. They're made of solid cement. And while you can take a seat on the sofa, cozy wouldn't be the best word to describe the experience.

Today you will come across a situation that will look quite different--if you would only take a few small steps toward it. A closer look can change your whole perspective.. when you take the time to go deeper.

Stephen Goforth