Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
Be picky about what you stick to. Persevere in the things that matter, that bring you happiness, and that move you toward your goals. Quit everything else, to free up those resources so you can pursue your goals and stop sticking to things that slow you down. – Annie Duke, Quit: The Power of Knowing
I consider myself to be a fairly rational and analytical person. This mode of thinking is useful for making many decisions, but not all of them. This is the problem Russ Roberts tackles in his book, Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us. As an economist, Roberts’ default mode it to tackle
The medieval farmer simply had no reason to adopt such a bizarre idea in the first place. Workers got up with the sun and slept at dusk, the lengths of their days varying with the seasons. There was no need to think of time as something abstract and separate from life: you milked the cows
I’m still reading Henri Nouwen’s account of his time at the monastery and he keeps sharing a bunch of insights that somehow seem super relevant to my life. Nearing the latter half of his stay at the monastery, he is trying to figure out what his life should look like after he leaves. How much time
“Togetherness is easy. It’s relaxing. It flows. It’s what happens when we all stop trying to control each other’s actions and simply let each other be.” – Michaeleen Doucleff, Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Humans. I recently read the fun book, Hunt, Gather,
The image of human excellence I would like to offer as a counterweight to freedom thus understood is that of a powerful, independent mind working at full song. Such independence is won through disciplined attention, in the kind of action that joins us to the world. And—this is important—it is precisely those constraining circumstances that
Since I became a dad, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how we can apply ancient wisdom to parenting. When I did my initial experiments, I was in my mid-20s and was not concerned at all with taking care of a tiny human. Recently I’ve been revisiting some of these wisdom traditions to see
Henri Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest who built a reputation as spiritual leader, teacher, and writer during his lifetime. During his time as a professor at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s, he spent seven months at a Trappist Monastery, The Abbey of the Genesee, in upstate New York living as a monk. He
I attended my cousin’s wedding this weekend in Annapolis and the officiant made the point that while marriage is a noun, in practice it is a verb. “Marriaging” is a more accurate way to discuss the commitment my cousin and his wife were making. It is a lifelong action. This may seem obvious in the
No one can be moral—that is, no one can harmonize contained conflicts—without coming to a working arrangement between the angel in himself and the devil in himself, between his rose above and his manure below. The two forces or tendencies are mutually interdependent, and the game is a working game just so long as the