I think that I was really ignoring my personal relationship with the cello. I think I was using the cello as a tool, trying to extract all the good that I could from it in a way that would make an impact for other people. But I wasn't really considering, what does this sound, what does this practice mean for me?
I saw how people would treat me when I'm by myself versus when my parents were there. And I also knew that our house wasn't one that talked about race or talked about issues or problems more broadly. And again, instinctively, as a black boy, I didn't think they would believe me.
The most successful people that I've ever worked for or interviewed, and I mean like some of the wealthiest people in the world, they're not people who said, "I've made enough money," but they're people who changed the measure and stopped just measuring themselves based on how much money they have.
Most of us are familiar with the pull of a fresh start. But researcher Kristina Olson has found something surprising: people who make dramatic life changes — who blow up their lives — often report higher levels of well-being than those who stay the course, even when the change involves significant loss and hardship.
If you can align and interconnect who am I, what I believe, and what I'm doing, if you can connect those three dots, your chance of meaning making goes way up. If you can't connect those dots, your chances of meaning making goes way down. You can't connect a dot you've not articulated.
Looking back, I think that I was really ignoring my personal relationship with the cello. I think I was using the cello as a tool, trying to extract all the good that I could from it in a way that would make an impact for other people. But I wasn't really considering, what does this sound, what does this practice mean for me?
People we don't actually know, and these can be people who in reality lead very, very messy lives. They can be lost, very conflicted people, and we still let them tell us what to do.
I just keep doing that with my books. my characters are getting older along with me. I guess I can remember reading books when I was younger about older women and thinking, isn't that interesting? They're still they still have a rich inner life. They're still people, still have relationships. And things still matter. They're not just sort of blobs.
I write in this book, sometimes you have to ruin your reputation to save your life. So, you know, I like people. I don't like putting on this front of, oh, I'm, you know, too busy to answer the phone. And so I didn't really listen to any of them because I was trying to listen to whatever this little heart of mine was trying to say.
Psychologist Anthony Klotz studies the "jolts" that shake us out of our routines, and how these moments can help us make more intentional decisions about the people we want to become.
To be your authentic self at work is um a level of like vulnerability and putting yourself forward when like you're sacrificing time with your family, with your community, mentally with yourself and these jobs expect so much from you, but you are ultimately disposable.
I guess I can remember reading books when I was younger about older women and thinking, uh, isn't that interesting? They're still they still have a a rich inner life. They're still people,
The mark of being part of the 'wrong group,' a peripheral group rather than a central one, is that nothing you do is right. And what's so interesting about not being able to win, and by conforming, is that you learn to do whatever you [expletive] well please.
Almost everybody that comes here has has a past, and they're always running to something, some are running from something, but mostly they're running to a future.
the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge, you know, and that's true whether you're talking about how your life is actually going versus the Instagram post you just got up, put up, or that you saw of someone else, or like how professional and put together you're seeming on a Zoom call when actually you're not wearing any pants, you know, just out of the frame.
We all feel that we have to perform this version of ourselves that knows the script, that, as you said, is commanding and decisive and desirable, the best public version of ourselves. We're performing that. But actually the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge.
Everybody sizing one another up as being fresher off the boat, more foreign and weird. These were critical determinations, often coming down to the strangeness of some kid's sneakers or shirt or haircut. I don't recall any of the sort of taunting and name-calling we had at the apartment complex, but there was patent discrimination.
Men are feeling unsatisfied or lonely and they see this kind of new hyper masculinity as a possible answer. And I think that's on some level it's more appealing because it's easier than you know introspection and you know self-reflection.
We we self-deprecate and we sort of downplay ourselves and our dreams throughout our life. Especially for people who grow up in marginalized communities and people who are not necessarily, you know, born and raised here or people who come from immigrant or refugee families and it's time to sort of reclaim ourselves and our dreams and our narratives.
I'd stopped trying to find Matilda, because I realized she'd been inside me the whole time. She was the girl I'd been dreaming about since I was three. I didn't become her. I just finally let her out.
And when I think about that particular time in my life, I don't know, I just felt like that was Peter. That was this stage where you're looking back at the things and the places that you've been, and you don't know how to define them to move forward.
And it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone. That was around the time that I was working at that group home for at-risk teenagers.
I was reflecting a lot on my 20s when I left university and when I didn't really have a real direction in life, when a lot of my friends were going off to other things and it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone.
And it also just feels so, to me, so relatable. At that stage in life, I remember being in those parties. I remember being surrounded by people who all seem like they have it together and seem like they are having the time of their lives. And I remember certain times feeling very alone in the middle of it.
His original goal is he wants to go to a physical place. He wants to go home because that's where he feels he belongs. But along the way, I think he learns that what's more important is he needs a pack and that everyone needs a pack.
I was really interested in having our antagonist be somebody who is younger than Peter, who really represents, in many ways, what young people are going through right now, what young people are feeling. This is a character who can literally jump into other people's minds and experience the lives of other people. But she's also a person who is completely alone in this city, and nobody really knows the real her, you know.
As you know, privileged as you may be or as attractive as you may be or whatever it is, if you are not white presenting in certain spaces, your narrative is different. Your experience of the world is different. and your identity is different because part of your identity is responding to how you have been perceived for your entire life.
I think of the baby woman as kind of like the evil twin of the girlboss. And I think baby womanhood is the complete opposite of of the girlboss in that it's saying, I do not want any of these responsibilities. Just take them away. Someone else do it.
Most of us go through life thinking of ourselves as ordinary. We assume that our experiences, our feelings, our struggles are common — that what happens to us happens to everyone. But this assumption, however comforting, may be costing us dearly.
Most of us know that we're similar to others in many ways, and different from others in many ways. What psychologist Brian Little has found is that there is something that makes each of us truly unique — not just different from others in degree, but different from everyone else who has ever lived. That something is the particular combination of all our traits.
Most of us can point to experiences that made us who we are — a teacher who believed in us, a parent who didn't, a move to a new city that forced us to reinvent ourselves. But psychologists have found that we dramatically underestimate how much we will change in the future, even as we readily acknowledge how much we've changed in the past.
To be your authentic self at work is um a level of like vulnerability and putting yourself forward when like you're sacrificing time with your family, with your community, mentally with yourself. And these jobs expect so much from you, but you are ultimately disposable.
Most of us feel we have an ordinary life. We are not famous, we have not discovered a cure for cancer or written a great novel. But the psychologist Brian Little argues this view is mistaken. Our lives are filled with what he calls 'personal projects' — the goals and pursuits that animate us and give meaning to our existence.
Most of us are somewhere in the middle of the bell curve on most traits — but the more traits you consider, the more each of us diverges into a unique combination that has never existed before and will never exist again. When you consider the totality of who you are, you are not ordinary.
I think I'd had a sense of transcendence very strongly when my father died. And that led me on to want to get closer to the source of transcendence. And I thought, you know, religion maybe had the key.
The face is traditionally how we come to know each other, how we the first glimpse we have of a person's temperament and soul and life history and disposition. It tells us it answers so many questions. Also, you can tell if a person is tired. You can tell if they're sick. You can tell their emotions. Do they laugh a lot by their laugh lines?
I think fundamentally the prison looked to me like a hill. It's hard for me to remember what the prison looked like to me as a child because I went there for almost 40 years and it changed a lot in that 40 years. It became much more prison-like.
Race and class and identity like always seem to be right there on the surface at the World Cup every 4 years. Like, maybe more so than any other sporting event.
I think that we all have really strong senses about the life that we want to live and the kind of person that we want to become, but once you have children and you're no longer living for yourself, you no longer have the time you want to do everything the right way. You can be this ardent environmentalist who's all of a sudden using disposable diapers.
I think about it as it's become like the scarlet H. They've taken those conditions and treated them as if it's a moral failure. They've then pinned that on anyone with a label homeless.
