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We are always getting ready to live, but never living. And yet the secret of all life is enjoyment; it is just to notice what is happening, to see it, to taste it in its fullness, to find the curious savor of it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1834)
1w ago

We are always acting on what has just finished happening, and reflecting on what is about to begin. The moment of pure presence is always receding.

1w ago
whyisthisinteresting
The ‘50 First Dates’ Edition

In an obviously less extreme way, I have always felt that my own days start twice. The first comes as soon as I wake up, groggy and typically with racing thoughts following a bizarre dream, or due to some latent anxiety concerning my to-do list for the coming day. The second beginning comes about an hour later, once I've showered, walked, eaten, and either talked to someone, or listened to a great song or podcast.

2w ago

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. A thought is a substitute for everything, and to exchange one's self for it is to lose everything.

2w ago

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

3w ago

We are not troubled by things, but by the opinions which we have of things. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never blame others, but ourselves — that is, our own opinions.

3w ago

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves. And yet we cannot make peace with ourselves by turning away from the world; we can only do it by turning more deeply into it.

3w ago

The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock of the air in motion.

4w ago

We are always in our own company. Sometimes I feel I could tear myself open, not out of pain, but out of curiosity.

4w ago

We are always getting ready to live, but never living. The vague promises of the future are enough to keep us tethered to the present without ever fully inhabiting it.

4w ago
themarginalian.org
Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity

Although they stopped explicitly looking and found ways to navigate on their own, their autonomic nervous system never stopped needing, and longing for, co-regulation. Because we are physiologies first and psychologies second, but we are also storytelling and sensemaking creatures, our minds naturally create emotional narratives out of these unconscious vagal states — stories that, if we are not careful enough and conscious enough, may come to subsume reality.

1mo ago

We are all serving a life-sentence in the dungeon of self. Blessed are they who have drugged themselves with the opium of a purpose — whether it be poetry or science or politics or the discovery of one's own soul.

1mo ago
jefftweedy
Bizarre Love Triangle (New Order cover)

I think part of it was an unwillingness to let go of that joke. And I think that's probably my only valid excuse other than obstinacy and overthinking.

1mo ago
whyisthisinteresting
The Monday Media Diet with Matt Spevack

I guess some might argue that reading would have the benefit of expanding my mind, but I already have so many creative and administrative projects I'm excited about that I can hardly keep up with my own ideas. That's my unapologetic justification for not reading.

1mo ago
themarginalian.org
The One Hundred Milliseconds Between the World and You: Oliver Sacks on Perception

We deceive ourselves if we imagine that we can ever be passive, impartial observers. Every perception, every scene, is shaped by us, whether we intend it or know it, or not. We are the directors of the film we are making — but we are its subjects too: every frame, every moment, is us, is ours.

1mo ago
lennysnewsletter.com
Why a sabbatical can change everything

Understanding your tendencies doesn't just give you a lens to help choose the most suitable sabbatical; it also provides a mirror to help you see the life that warrants reexamination.

2mo ago

The most thought-provoking thing in our over-thought world is that most people never think at all. And those who do think do not think enough — for most of their thinking is thinking about their thinking, which is no thinking at all.

2mo ago

We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. And when we change, all things change with us — not because the world has shifted, but because the lens through which we read it has.

2mo ago

We are all serving a life-sentence in the dungeon of self. More and more, I suspect that solitude, which is the dungeon, contains also within it the key to its own liberation.

2mo ago
themarginalian.org
Thich Nhat Hanh on the Art of Deep Listening and the 3 Buddhist Steps to Repairing a Relationship

When we are hurt in a relationship, when we are spinning in the blooming buzzing confusion of sensemaking, the explanation we elect as correct usually has more to do with our own fears and vulnerabilities than it does with the reality of the situation; almost always, that explanation is wrong; almost always, the true explanation has more to do with the fears and vulnerabilities roiling in the other person invisibly to us.

2mo ago

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

2mo ago

We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.

2mo ago

The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.

2mo ago

The investor's chief problem — and even his worst enemy — is likely to be himself. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.

2mo ago

We are apt to think that our ideas are a measure of things; but they are only a measure of ourselves.

2mo ago
longreads.com
A Diehard Drinker Accidentally Quits

Before giving up drinking, I had very little earnestness at my command. I drank in order to give myself permission to talk openly, or at great length, or to heighten the sensation of listening or being listened to. Drinking is way easier than saying that you want to talk to someone, or don't.

2mo ago

To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them; and the pleasure of waking up is so much more beautiful than that of dreaming, that it must never be desired to have the eyes closed.

3mo ago

We are all of us the worse for too much solitude. A man who shuts himself up from the world falls into an exaggerated estimate of his own importance, and loses the power of measuring himself by his fellows.

3mo ago

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

4mo ago
themarginalian.org
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life

If we truly comprehend and acknowledge that we are all imperfect creatures, we find that we become more tolerant and accepting of others' shortcomings and the world appears less dissonant, less isolating, less threatening.

4mo ago

The true paradox of consciousness is that we are never more fully ourselves than when we have forgotten ourselves—and this forgetting is not a loss but a gain, for in losing the boundary of self we touch something universal.

4mo ago
noahpinion.blog
Dating advice for men

A lot of men — maybe even most men — get emotionally attached to our sex partners. There are well-known natural mechanisms for this. For those guys, going through one woman after another, again and again, for years and years, is just making and breaking those attachments again and again. That's not fun, that's self-punishment.

4mo ago

The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely at those moments when we forget ourselves—when we are absorbed in something other than our own ego.

4mo ago
themarginalian.org
Simone de Beauvoir on Marriage and the Freedom to Change

In reality, the self making the choices at a point in time and the self living with their consequences across the timeline of life, the self avowing the promises and the self keeping or breaking them, are never the same person. To know this about oneself is the beginning of mercy.

4mo ago

The difference between a competent person and an incompetent one is often that the competent person has learned how to recognize and avoid the standard modes of self-deception.

4mo ago
jefftweedy
Left of the Dial (Replacements cover)

As an addict, you have to remind yourself that you're still an addict, even when you aren't doing things that are terrible for you.

4mo ago
3quarksdaily.com
I suspect that I was outsourcing my own eating

Really, though, my bereavement was internal and external justification for something I would have wanted to try anyway. I've trended toward heaviness my entire life, and food has always been a font of shame.

4mo ago

The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely when we cease to be aware of ourselves—when the self dissolves into action, perception, or creation.

5mo ago

The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely when we cease to think about consciousness at all, and surrender ourselves to the world.

5mo ago
themarginalian.org
How to See More Clearly and Love More Purely: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other

It is, of course, impossible to ever fully know what it is like to be someone else — this is the cost of consciousness, singular and secretive as it is; impossible, too, to fully convey to another what it is like to be you. The dream of perfectly clear vision is indeed just a dream. But we can always see a little more clearly in order to love a little more purely.

5mo ago
themarginalian.org
Do Not Spare Yourself

there is no damnation greater than spending our allotted days in the catatonia of comfort and certainty, our inner lives automated by habit and halogen lit by convenience.

5mo ago

The true paradox of consciousness is that the more we think about it directly, the more it eludes us; yet in the very act of eluding our grasp, it reveals itself most fully.

5mo ago
longreads.com
Masking My Autism Made Me Sick

Looking back, adults in particular have a terrible habit of labeling as "good" what is merely convenient for them, of painting as "good" what is really just their standard for normal.

5mo ago

Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.

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