Hello hello my dear friends.
Here's your no-good, unstable, stoic-existentialist writer. There were a lot of links I would like to share with you but the Universe did not let me post up until now. No no, I am just a lazy guy trying to find what I really want from this life. Sometimes I am here, sometimes there, but who knows who is going where?
Let’s get to the good stuff.
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian
Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.
Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.
There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.
In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again.
Seek out what magnifies your spirit.
One more from me:
You cannot suffer from not having something if you do not know it exists. Be more ignorant of what is materialistically possible out there.
My beloved Mary Oliver collected some essays under the name Upstream.
When you say “I read my books with diligence, and mounting skill, and gathering certainty. I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.” I feel you Mary. I feel you.
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
The 100 Best Bits of Advice from 10 Years of First Round Review
One of the best of the best posts on leadership/management/startups I have read for a looong time.
Your probability of winning a hand always depends on having multiple ways to win.
Often, a good impression is a byproduct of deep engagement in a conversation, a desire to learn, or thoughtful work, as opposed to something you aim at directly. Ironically, if you want to make a good impression, focus less on impressing people.
People need to feel comfortable disagreeing. That doesn’t mean allowing things to flare and get crazy-tense, but also making sure it’s not super-sanitized and folks feel pressure to be kumbaya all the time. When you see the beginnings of healthy conflict, lean into it. Say, “That’s interesting, this feels productive. Let’s talk about it.” It signals that you’re intentionally fostering different ideas.”
Create reframing mindsets through Framestorm
The first step to solving your problems is reframing what the problem is. Questions below will help you generate solid alternatives to what might your actual problem be.
Bad luck is easy to identify when you fail and good luck is easy to ignore when you succeed.
9 Timeless Lessons About Human Psychology
Every now and then there is strong need in me to listen to quality podcast.
Happiness isn't absolute; it's relative, comparing to others' wealth or achievements.
Fame alters everyone around, more than the person experiencing it, often accompanied by unforeseen baggage.
Life often delivers experiences slightly less satisfying than imagined, driving perpetual dissatisfaction.
Heroes and accomplished figures in history often had significant personal flaws or aspects of life that were less than admirable; it's essential to view them holistically rather than idolize selectively.
Context and incentives matter: Human performance isn't solely physical; it's the combination of physical ability and the psychological context, including incentives and emotions.
Cycles of volatility: Economic booms and recessions are rooted in periods of calmness; optimism fuels debt, instability, and eventual crashes in a cyclic pattern.
Why You Should Cultivate a Fluid Sense of Self
Be fluid. Ready to change. Not limit yourself. Not define yourself based on one part of your life/goal/personality. Remember what Oscar Wilde said?
TO DEFINE IS TO LIMIT.
What you want to do is challenge yourself to integrate the various elements of your identity into a cohesive whole. This allows you to emphasize and deemphasize certain parts of your identity at different periods of time. The result is a fluid sense of self. If you want to be excellent and experience something fully, then you’ve got to go all in, but only to a point. If your identity becomes too enmeshed in any one concept or endeavor—be it your age, how you look in the mirror, a relationship, or your career—then you are likely to face significant distress when things change, which, for better or worse, they always do.
I opened up this post hoping some cheesy ideas scattered as a clickbait but to my surprise it was dense on every level.
There are no mistakes, only lessons.
“There” is no better than “here”.
Others are only mirrors of you
What you make of your life is up to you
10 Japanese Concepts For Self-Improvement and a Balanced Life
Wabi-sabi
Wabi-sabi is a concept that encourages us to embrace our imperfections and accept the natural cycle of life.
Mottainai
Mottainai means respecting the resources we have, not wasting them, and using them with a sense of gratitude.
Mono no aware
This concept describes having empathy towards things and their inevitable passing.
Shu-Ha-Ri:
Learn the basics. Imitate, then innovate.
Aren’t you bored of binary thinking?
Abortion / not abortion. Capitalism / Socialism. Liberals / Conservatives. Islam / Christianity.
Rigid ideology is boring. Life must be more fluid than this. Language, meaning and reality are too complex to be compressed into binary terms. One idea or explanation must not be more valuable than the opposite one. To hell with Western thought.
Derrida criticizes logocentrism, arguing that language is subjective and context-dependent, making absolute truth elusive. He introduces the concept that language operates in an open-ended "play" where meanings are constantly evolving and dependent on relationships with other words, challenging the assumption of a singular truth beyond language. (thanks ChatGPT)
I adored this comment from the video:
Levels of thought:
binary (black/white)
along a scale (shades of gray)
as a graph in two dimensions (we need some water but there is a point when less water is better; a bell curve)
as a graph in 3 dimensions (balance of right amount of food, exercise and sleep)
feeling of the right amount of multiple variables. Feels like intuition because it is too difficult to verbalize.
This shows we got to the end of another year and it reminded me of the quote from Frisch:
Is this what you call life, he asks, watching one's beard and fingernails grow?
But that is not the point.
Here is my best invention from the list. I love fire and fireplace. Don’t blame me, blame my ancestors who worshipped the fire.
29 Lessons On My 29th Birthday
One from me: Never feel sorry about the money you spent on good shoes, comfortable bed, waterproof boots, one sexy glass, one fitting white shirt (once foung buy 5), ergonomic chair and dense coffee.
The 3 F's:
1. Friends
2. Freedom
3. Flow State
This accounted for 90% of my happiness:
The Age of Adaline, I cannot let you go without a film rec. You see, I am addicted.
Ellis Jones: You know they have a saying in Italy. "Anni, amori, e bicchieri di vino, no che contato mai."
Adaline Bowman: Years, lovers... wine cups?
Ellis Jones: Years, lovers, and glasses of wine. These are things that should never be counted.
A great poem, I cannot let you go without one
Poet's Corner - WH Auden on Ignorance:
(From The Dog Beneath the Skin)
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read
The Hunter’s waking thoughts. Lucky the leaf
Unable to predict the fall. Lucky indeed
The rampant suffering suffocating jelly
Burgeoning in pools, lapping the grits of the desert,
The elementary sensual cures,
The hibernations and the growth of hair assuage:
Or best of all the mineral stars disintegrating quietly into
light
But what shall man do, who can whistle tunes by heart,
Know to the bar when death shall cut him short, like the cry
of the shearwater?
Would you like to add your songs to the list of “what-are-the-10-songs-you-choose-if-you-cannot-listen-to-any-other-song-until-you-die” . Here is an invitation.
BOOK SUMMARY
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
— Ian Maclaren, WRITER
“It depends” is almost always the right answer in any big question.
— Linus Torvalds, SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Remember, you don’t owe anybody any explanations, you don’t owe your parents any explanations, you don’t owe your professors any explanations.
— Bono, MUSICIAN/ACTIVIST
If you can’t get what you wish for, forget about it.
— Antonio Pierro , WORLD WAR I VETERAN
Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
— E. B. White,WRITER
When you see a good move, look for a better one.
— Emanuel Lasker, CHESS MASTER
Question everything! You never know where a “silly question” may lead you.
— Derek Abbott, PHYSICIST/ELECTRONIC ENGINEER
Unless you have a hundred unanswered questions in your mind, you haven’t read enough.
— Daniel J. Bernstein, MATHEMATICIAN/PROGRAMMER
Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.
— Samuel Beckett, WRITER
If you wish to be a writer, write.
— Epictetus, GREEK PHILOSOPHER
Live as if you were already living for a second time and as if you had made the mistakes you are about to make now.
— Viktor Frankl , PSYCHIATRIST
Don’t be humble. You’re not that great.
— Golda Meir, STATESWOMAN
If everything is under control, you are going too slow.
— Mario Andretti, RACE CAR DRIVER
Consult your friend on all things, especially on those that respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment,
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca, ROMAN PHILOSOPHER/STATESMAN
The world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.
— Henri Cartier-Bresson, PHOTOGRAPHER
Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.
— Ray Bradbury, WRITER
Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions: Why am I doing it? What will the results be? Will I be successful? Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.
— Chanakya, POLITICIAN KNOWN AS THE INDIAN MACHIAVELLI
All suffering is caused by being in the wrong place. If you’re unhappy where you are, move.
— Timothy Leary, PROFESSOR/COUNTERCULTURE ICON
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca , ROMAN PHILOSOPHER/STATESMAN
The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
— Albert Einstein, PHYSICIST
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
— Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) , WRITER
If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it
— Frank Zappa, MUSICIAN
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
— Epictetus, ROMAN PHILOSOPHER
Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.
— Evelyn Waugh, WRITER
If you are praised, be silent. If you are scolded, be silent. If you incur losses, be silent. If you receive profit, be silent. If you are satiated, be silent. If you are hungry, also be silent. And do not be afraid that there will be no fruit when all dies down; there will be! Not everything will die down. Energy will appear; and what energy!
— Saint Feofil, RUSSIAN MYSTIC
The big secret in life is that there is no big secret.
— Oprah Winfrey, MEDIA MAGNATE
Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
— Viktor Frankl, PSYCHIATRIST
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
— Ernest Hemingway, WRITER
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
— Mother Teresa, HUMANITARIAN
Learn to draw. Or to play the cello. Or to tap dance. Something impractical, even useless. Whatever it is, it ought to be hard for you, something you haven’t really got time for, and that by professional standards you probably won’t ever do well.
— John Walsh, ART HISTORIAN
Never memorize what you can look up in books.
— Albert Einstein, PHYSICIST
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
— Steve Jobs, APPLE COFOUNDER, QUOTING THE FINAL ISSUE OF THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOG AS WORDS THAT GUIDE HIS LIFE
Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.
— David Bowie, MUSICIAN
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
— Marcus Aurelius, ROMAN EMPEROR
1. Control your destiny or someone else will.
2. Face reality as it is, not as it was or you wish it were.
3. Be candid with everyone.
4. Don’t manage, lead.
5. Change before you have to.
6. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
— Jack Welch, BUSINESSMAN
If you can’t convince them, confuse them.
— Harry S. Truman, STATESMAN
The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
— Bob Marley, MUSICIAN
Back Up Your Hard Drive. What do I mean by that? Although your life may be cruising along smoothly, I recommend that every once in a while you stop and envision a sudden shipwreck occurring. Then think, re-think and remember what you would really want to hold on to if disaster should strike.
— Larry Bock, VENTURE CAPITALIST
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, WRITER
Learn all you can.
— Classroom Rules , WESTON MIDDLE SCHOOL, WESTON, OREGON
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
— Abraham Maslow, PSYCHOLOGIST
The world only exists in your eyes. . . . You can make it as big or as small as you want.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, WRITER
Three meals a day. Work hard. Keep yourself clean. Get enough sleep. What else is there?
— Antonio Pierro, WORLD WAR I VETERAN
If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent, it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?
— Robert Townsend, BUSINESSMAN
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you are a man, you take it.
— Malcolm X, RELIGIOUS LEADER/ACTIVIST
Talk is cheap. Show me the code.
— Linus Torvalds, SOFTWARE ENGINEER
If you’re about to get into a fight, and you know for sure you’re going to fight, make sure you punch first.
— Vincent Lecavalier, HOCKEY PLAYER
Don’t fear god,
Don’t worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.
— Epicurus, ROMAN PHILOSOPHER
Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one’s garden.
— Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), PHILOSOPHER/WRITER
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
— Jane Austen, WRITER
Don’t sidestep suffering. You have to go through it to get where you’re going.
— Katherine Anne Porter, WRITER
Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.
— Charles Dickens, WRITER
Just remember, we’re all in this alone.
— Jane Wagner ,WRITER/DIRECTOR
I once complained to my father that I didn’t seem to be able to do things the same way other people did. Dad’s advice? “Margo, don’t be a sheep. People hate sheep. They eat sheep.”
— Margo Kaufman, WRITER
Make love when you can. It’s good for you.
— Kurt Vonnegut, WRITER
Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.
— John Churton Collins, WRITER
Underpromise and overdeliver.
— Robin Li, BUSINESSMAN
When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
— Epictetus , GREEK PHILOSOPHER
The first rule of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging.
— Molly Ivins, WRITER
Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age.
— Jon Stewart, COMEDIAN/TV SHOW HOST
All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.
— Jean-Luc Godard, FILM DIRECTOR
Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.
— Janis Joplin , SINGER
And most important of all, never take advice from anyone: Confusing, I know. That is the point.
Take no advice, including this.
— Carl Sandburg
WRITER