No one wants to explore the darkest recesses of the soul without bringing along a light. Allow self-improvement to occur at the deepest levels by aligning the entirety of your being with your purpose, facilitated by operating in a context of lightness.
–Rebirthing by Leonard & Laut
Use your skills & talents, doing what you enjoy, to create the perfect world for someone else.
Chess skills are most helpful when you are playing chess. However, when you climb & jump on rocks, your entire brain & body are put to work.
The board & pieces are all the material, but the METAGAME dynamic is certainly a factor in competition. The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig is about losing the battle to a weaker player who uses a novel psychology.
That’s me at the board, on the right, maybe 20 years ago.
Passion needs to be cultivated.
What is the best thing you can think of? Let your natural passion for existence extend to include that.
P.S. You are more likely to think of something better while you are doing something productive rather than while you are “just waiting”.
Rebirthing by Leonard & Laut
Downtown in the last century was characterized as an industry hub. Since the pandemic, remote work has isolated people.
New lure for cities are the central social districts. Restaurants, coffee shops, and coworking spaces add robust connectivity to a city’s economy.
Absurdism is profoundly human. Camus says it urges us to revolt against meaninglessness by creating our own values. Choosing presence in a harsh universe affirms that optimistic defiance. The cosmos may be indifferent, yet our capacity for wonder makes staying worthwhile.
–Grok
Artificial Intelligence might prove to be an inspired portal to higher consciousness. How much more of humanity should it be allowed to control (if it even can be constrained)?
Seven older gentlemen of various political persuasions gather in the courtyard under the squawking birds to politely discuss and examine, in regulated heartbeat, the current issues and events of the week.
High-school classmates, both living & dead, unknown to others outside of Los Gatos, they also like to talk about.
Exclusive club it is.
Who but an atheist could think of leaving the world without having first made up his account?
It is then he will find in what mighty stead that heathen goddess, that virtue, which you and all other deists of the age adore, will stand him.
Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding
Avoid at all cost the priorities in your life that aren’t in your top five, because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to form the core of your life, yet seductive enough to distract you from the priorities that matter most.
Oliver Burkeman