Category: life

• Viktor Frankl on success

  From Man’s Search for Meaning: 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 dedication to a cause greater than oneself…

• Lewis Thomas on the awe-inspiring collective project of human language

  From The Lives of a Cell: There are lots of possibilities here, but if you think about the construction of the Hill by a colony of a million ants, each one working ceaselessly and compulsively to add perfection to his region of the structure without having the faintest notion of what is being constructed elsewhere,…

• The life lesson that Edward Snowden learned from Super Mario Bros.

  From Permanent Record: It was the NES—the janky but genius 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System—that was my real education. From The Legend of Zelda, I learned that the world exists to be explored; from Mega Man, I learned that my enemies have much to teach; and from Duck Hunt, well, Duck Hunt taught me that even…

• Maria Popova on reality’s density of wonder

  The remarkable opening line of Maria Popova’s Figuring: All of it—the rings of Saturn and my father’s wedding band, the underbelly of the clouds pinked by the rising sun, Einstein’s brain bathing in a jar of formaldehyde, every grain of sand that made the glass that made the jar and each idea Einstein ever had,…

• There aren’t even any endings

  It’s difficult to walk through a rainforest and fear death. Scrambling through saplings growing out of nurse logs fallen across rotting stumps rich with moss, ferns, and fungus. Everything underfoot and overhead a verdant, fecund mess—churning, fractal growth with wonder at every scale. Each tree an ecosystem unto itself. Each tree a node in a…

• America at its best

  In 2017, my wife and I hosted a Ugandan refugee for nine months as he began the profoundly difficult process of building a new life. Today, he has his own apartment, works a full-time job in which he takes immense pride, and just got his Green Card. He is America at its best. Complement with…

• Renovating the American Dream

  Visiting Europe in 2019 reveals that the US is a failed state where physical and social infrastructure has been steadily degrading since the 1970s. America needs to rediscover what it means to invest in a better future for everyone. Complement with io9 on economic inequality in Cumulus, this La Soga interview, and the America I…

• How to overcome the post-launch blues

  So I had a new novel come out a few weeks ago, and “post-launch blues” are one of the things authors talk about amongst ourselves but rarely mention publicly: the emotional low immediately following the release of a project you’ve sunk years of life and energy into. You’ve got so much buildup and anxiety and…

• Fellow travelers make the best teachers

  I’ve learned so much more from peers than from experts. Seek out kindred spirits, grow alongside them, help them achieve their dreams, and accept their help with grace. We are each other’s catalysts. Complement with the power of small things, the growth corkscrew, and most successful people have no idea what made them successful. Get…

• The power of small things

  Like water molecules slowly eroding a landscape, our individual choices, no matter how small, shape history. Complement with the growth corkscrew, simple and difficult, and how to create meaning instead of trying to find it. Get new posts delivered straight to your inbox: This blog exists thanks to the generous support of loyal readers. Become…