“Not because happiness exists, that over-hasty profit from imminent loss, not out of curiosity, or to practice the heart… But because being here is much, and because all that’s here seems to need us.” In the bleak winter of 1922, a “hurricane of the spirit” swept the ailing and downtrodden Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, […]
Branchings of belief from the lovely common root of “holy” and “whole” in the interleaving of all things. Some years ago, at a gathering exploring our human search for meaning through a kaleidoscope of perspectives in the middle of the redwoods, I sat down for a conversation with an astronomer I had just met, who […]
Audre Lorde, Keith Haring, Bruce Lee, chance, love, black holes, constraint as a catalyst of creativity, and a whisper of Whitman. I have moved through this fourteenth year of Brain Pickings — a devastating year for the world we share, a discomposing year for my private world — by leaning on the writings and wisdom […]
Why our instinctive efforts to salve another’s sadness tend to only deepen their helpless anguish and broaden the abyss between us and them — and what to do instead. “Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted,” Elizabeth Gilbert reflected in the wake of losing the love of her life. “Grief […]
Expand / / The mixture comprised in Road Dahl’s 1981 children’s novel, George’s Marvelous Medicinethat may be detrimental –even deadly –to grandmas{} BMJ research finds. (charge: YouTube/Storyvision Studios UK) Famous children’s writer Roald Dahl heavily admired physicians who pioneered new medications, as well as committed his 1981 novel, George’s Marvelous Medicine–where a young boy pops […]
A song of praise for “all souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different… all nations, colors… all identities that have existed or may exist… all lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future.” We live our lives by tidal forces — vast oceanic waves of change and chance sweeping us together, […]
“In time of struggle… all people think about love.” “My one reader, you reading this book, who are you?” Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913–February 12, 1980) asks with the large forthright eyes of her words in one of the most beautiful and penetrating books ever written on any subject. “What is your face like, your […]
“The final and absolute test of good government is the well-being and contentment of the people — not the extent of empire or the abundance of the revenue and the trade.” The polymathic British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (January 8, 1823‐November 7, 1913) is best known as the man evolution left behind. While Wallace arrived […]
“Our experiences trump everything else, but mostly, those experiences are incredibly skewed: they teach us, but they don’t teach us well.” Decades before Simone de Beauvoir contemplated how chance and choice converge to make us who we are from the fortunate platform of old age, the eighteen-year-old Sylvia Plath — who never reached that fortunate […]
Amid that which that occurred this season, there were lots of good novels to read. Surely, some publishing homes pushed off a couple of releases and there on 2021. But there wasn’t any lack of excellent articles, along with book publishers and writers likewise made strides in boosting their work through electronic stations, maybe bringing […]