The Third Thing

“What we did: love. We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention.”

– The Third Thing by Donald Hall

I am Not Sure That I Exist

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

  • 12 / 19 / 2023
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Things That Aren’t Doing The Thing

“Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Fantasizing about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.

The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.”

– Things that aren’t doing the thing

Seed

Whatever seed
you are, bloom.
– Atticus

Trying to Make A Life Worth Living

Everything is on fire,
but everyone I love is doing beautiful things
and trying to make life worth living,
and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,
but I believe in that.
– Nikita Gill

Be Realistic

Be realistic, expect a miracle.
– Osho

Tension

I feel this.

A Relaxed Woman

“Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman. Successful women? Yes. Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At-ease women? Women who don’t dissect their days into half hour slots of productivity? Women who prioritize rest and pleasure and play? Women who aren’t afraid to take up space in the world? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax? Without guilt? Without apology? Without feeling like they need to earn it? I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one.”
― Nicola Jane Hobbs

The Magic

“The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.”
– Chris Williamson

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

“Some things can become true merely because we believe in them–that pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When modern economists assumed that people are innately selfish, they advocated policies that fostered self-serving behavior. When politicians convinced themselves that politics is a cynical game, that’s exactly what it became.”
― Rutger Bregman

From the book: Humankind A Hopeful History / Utopia for Realists And How We Can Get There

Magnifying Each Other’s Light

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.’
– Maria Popova

Uproot War from Ourselves

“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. ”
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Creative Process

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”
– Bruce Lee

  • 09 / 25 / 2023
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Missing From Your Job Description

– Add energy to every conversation
– Ask why
– Find obsolete things on your task list and remove them
– Treat customers better than they expect
– Offer to help co-workers before they ask
– Feed the plants
– Leave things more organized than you found them
– Invent a moment of silliness
– Highlight good work from your peers
– Find other great employees to join the team
– Cut costs
– Help invent a new product or service that people really want
– Get smarter at your job through training or books
– Encourage curiosity
– Surface and highlight difficult decisions
– Figure out what didn’t work
– Organize the bookshelf
– Start a club
– Tell a joke at no one’s expense
– Smile a lot.

I stumbled upon this post again from Seth. Not new. But oh so good.

50 Short Rules for a Better Life (From the Stoics)

Focus on what you can control.
You control how you respond to things.
Ask yourself, “Is this essential?”
Meditate on your mortality every day.
Value time more than money/possessions.
You are the product of your habits.
Remember you have the power to have no opinion.
Own the morning.
Put yourself up for review (Interrogate yourself).
Don’t suffer imagined troubles.
Try to see the good in people.
Never be overheard complaining…even to yourself.
Two ears, one mouth…for a reason (Zeno)
There is always something you can do.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
Live as if you’ve died and come back (every minute is bonus time).
“The best revenge is not to be like that.” Marcus Aurelius
Be strict with yourself and tolerant with others.
Put every impression, emotion, to the test before acting on it.
Learn something from everyone.
Focus on process, not outcomes.
Define what success means to you.
Find a way to love everything that happens (Amor fati).
Seek out challenges.
Don’t follow the mob.
Grab the “smooth handle.”
Every person is an opportunity for kindness (Seneca)
Say no (a lot).
Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Find one thing that makes you wiser every day.
What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee (Marcus Aurelius)
Don’t judge other people.
Study the lives of the greats.
Forgive, forgive, forgive.
Make a little progress each day.
Journal.
Prepare for life’s inevitable setbacks (premeditatio malorum)
Look for the poetry in ordinary things.
To do wrong to one, is to do wrong to yourself. (sympatheia)
Always choose “Alive Time.”
Associate only with people that make you better.
If someone offends you, realize you are complicit in taking offense.
Fate behaves as she pleases…do not forget this.
Possessions are yours only in trust.
Don’t make your problems worse by bemoaning them.
Accept success without arrogance, handle failure with indifference.
Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom. (Always).
The obstacle is the way.
Ego is the enemy.
Stillness is the key.

Found here.

Courage


Thank you Propheta, what you share is a gift.

Permission to be Creative

I keep coming back to this gem. This part:

“… It’s so beautiful is the thing that worries me sometimes whenever you talk about creativity, because it can have this kind of feel that it’s just nice, you know, it’s warm or it’s something pleasant.

It’s not it’s vital. It’s the way we heal each other in singing our song and telling our story and inviting you to say, hey, listen to me and I’ll listen to you. We’re starting a dialogue, you know. And when you do that, this healing happens and we come out of our corners and we start to witness each other’s common humanity. We start to assert it. And when we do that, really good things happen. So if you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, if you want to help your friends, you have to express yourself and to express yourself, you have to know yourself.”

Seeing Things

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
– Henry Miller

  • 07 / 25 / 2023
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The Finest Medicine

“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.”
– Henry Miller

To put it Simply

“To put it simply –
we are here to become
embodiments of love.”
– Paramatma Siri Sadhana

  • 07 / 04 / 2023
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Let Yourself Be The Milky Way

“You keep worrying
you’re taking up too much space.
I wish you’d let yourself
be the Milky Way.”
– Andrea Gibson

  • 06 / 26 / 2023
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A Universal “Data-base” of Positive Intentions

“Around the world, people create amazing experiences and opportunities. When they do, energetically, it becomes available to everyone. Think of it as a universal database of Creative Consciousness. One that we are all uploading our divine talents to. Therefore, we make them vibrationally accessible to kindred spirits across the globe.”
What is Creative Consciousness?

How can you trust people so much?

“I’m often asked: How can you trust people so much?
Because that’s the only way it works.”

(Thank you Melanie)

A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete – notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.

Great read: A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden