I lived so carefully, thinking someone was watching. But the stage was empty, the audience never came.
~ Osamu Dazai
Living carefully...
Relax
The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything. The better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.
~ Bill Murray
Interesting take
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.
~ Werner Heisenberg
I want...
Katie: Oh! I want...
I want...
Hubbell: What?
Katie: I want us to love each other.
~ from The Way We Were
Yup
It doesn't matter what we want. Once we get it, we want something else.
~ Petyr Baelish, Littlefinger in Game of Thrones
Mouring the loss of a future
When we lose someone,
we don't just mourn that person,
we mourn the loss of a future with them.
~ Dr. Shivers (the ship's counselor), to Capt. Pike, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (S4, E7)
It's not the thought, it's the judgement
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.
~ Epictetus
Arnold's weekly wisdom
We discuss the foundations of health every week:
- movement and exercise,
- nutrition,
- sleep,
- stress reduction, and
- social connection.
All conversations of aging start with those habits.
Truth is secondary...
If you wish to become a philosopher, the first thing to realise is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man’s world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man’s, so that they cannot both be right.People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.
~ Bertrand Russell, The Art of Philosophizing: And Other Essays (1968), Essay I: The Art of Rational Conjecture (1942), p. 7
Jenny Kiss'd Me
Jenny kissed me when we met,Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to getSweets into your list, put that in:
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,Jenny kissed me.
~ Leigh Hunt
If only...
Choose people who bring peace and contentment instead of chaos and suffering.
~ Nicole LePera
Even lovers?
Years, lovers, and glasses of wine.
These are things that should not be counted.
~ Italian saying, from The Age of Adaline
Desire
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard wrote these words in an 1847 letter to his ailing sister-in-law, emphasizing that walking was essential not only for physical health but also for mental clarity.
The Danish philosopher, who was known for his daily walks through the streets of Copenhagen, believed that constant movement was one of the best remedies for existential anxiety and mental stagnation.
Good advice
When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk
~ Tuco (the bad guy) in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Some people’s lives are as cold as their lips…
Some people's lives run down like clocks
One day they stop and that's all they've got
Some lives wear out like old tennis shoes
No one can use, well, it's sad but it's true
Didn't anybody tell them?
Didn't anybody see?
Didn't anybody love them
Like you love me?
Some people's lives fade like their dreams
Too tired to rise, too tired to sleep
Some people laugh when they need to cry
And they never know why
Didn't anybody tell them
That's not how it has to be?
Didn't anybody love them
Like you love me?
Some people ask if the tears have to fall
Then why take your chances?
Why bother at all?
And some people's lives are as cold as their lips
They just need to be kissed
Doesn't anybody tell them?
Doesn't anybody see?
Doesn't anybody love them
Like you love me?
Cause that's all they need
~ Janis Ian
Stupid is as stupid does…
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A great definition of Entitlement
Where you are now ->where you want to be
If you want to do something about it - that's ambition
Where you are now -> where you want to be
If you think that's someone else's problem - that's entitlement
~ Jimmy Carr
A great line on resentment...
If you think someone has ruined your life, you're right.
It's you.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Some do, some don't
Not having kids is like playing life on easy mode with a cheat code. You think you have skin in the game… but you don’t. Having kids is like your heart living outside your body. The stakes suddenly feel real.
~ Jimmy Carr
Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
~ Elizabeth Stone
Zig knows a thing or two
If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.
~ Zig Ziglar
The only thing worse than Date Night is never having Date Night...
Charlie Sheen and Bill Maher:
Bill: “Whenever these people get divorced in the media, the celebrities and they're always like, ‘What went wrong?’ Nothing went wrong. They were married 20 years. That's what went wrong. Time went wrong”
Charlie: “How do you feel about married couples that still have a date night on year 23?”
Bill: “Please put a bullet past my tongue if I ever have to have a fucking date night”
Charlie: “I cringe at those. They're cute and I'd like to root for it, but I know how they're both feeling at that dinner”
Bill: “To schedule sex is just so gross. It's the worst perversion there is”
I'm right there with you
I just never expected, at this age, to feel so alone...
~ Samantha, to Coop, on Your Friends and Neighbors
Very little, indeed...
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Happiness = quality of life minus envy
We’re living better than 99.9 percent of humans who ever walked the earth - hot showers, modern medicine, endless entertainment, kids that actually survive infancy.
Yet so many of us feel miserable.
We get used to how good we have it, then compare ourselves to everyone else and tank our own happiness.
Happiness = quality of life minus envy.
~ Jimmy Carr
Almost anything...
A man will tolerate almost anything except feeling disrespected in his own home.
~ Relationship advice from a grandmother to her granddaughter
Here's to worthy attempts!
On great mountains, all purpose is concentrated on the single job at hand, yet the summit is but a token of success, and the attempt is worthy in itself
~ Charles S. Houston, co-leader of the first ascent expedition on Nanda Devi and authority on altitude sickness.
I should be wide awake then...
The more complete the despair, the more complete the awakening.
~ Carl Jung
An oldie but a goldie
A man was in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask over his mouth.
He mumbles, "Nurse, are my testicles black?"
The nurse lifts his gown, holds his penis in one hand & his testicles in the other, takes a close look & says, "There's nothing wrong with them sir."
The man pulls off the oxygen mask, smiles at her & says very slowly, "Thanks for that. It was lovely, but listen very very carefully... Are-my-test-results-back?"
And yet we do nothing
There shouldn't be a classroom in America from kindergarten to PhD where you're allowed to use your personal devices.
We're rewiring their brains to become lonely and depressed.
~ ArthurBrooks
A great story
from the Athenaeum Book Club
A powerful scene in the Odyssey comes when Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca after twenty years of war and wandering.
You'd expect the story to end with a great celebration: with the hero coming home and the family reunited.
Homer does something far stranger.
Odysseus arrives disguised as a beggar, because Athena warns him that the palace has been taken over by more than a hundred suitors who have been living there for years, eating his food, drinking his wine, and pressuring his wife Penelope to marry one of them. They believe Odysseus is dead and in their minds the kingdom is already theirs.
So the king of Ithaca walks through his own halls dressed in rags while the men stealing his house sit comfortably at his tables. They mock him, throw scraps at him, and one of them even strikes him, and Odysseus takes it. The same man who blinded the Cyclops now stands quietly while strangers insult him in his own home. Homer tells us his heart burns inside his chest and that he wants to attack them immediately, yet he restrains himself and waits.
Instead of striking, Odysseus studies the room carefully. He counts the men, watches their habits, and observes which servants remain loyal and which have betrayed him. He delays his revenge until the moment is right.
Eventually Penelope announces a contest and brings out Odysseus' great bow, declaring that she will marry the man who can string it and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads lined up in a row. One by one the suitors try and fail, because none of them can even bend the bow. Then the beggar asks for a turn. The suitors laugh at first, but the bow is eventually handed to him.
Odysseus takes it in his hands and strings it effortlessly. Homer says the sound of the bowstring tightening rings through the hall like the note of a swallow. Then he places an arrow on the string and sends it cleanly through all twelve axe heads.
In that moment the beggar disappears. Odysseus turns the bow toward the suitors and reveals who he is.
What follows is one of the most brutal scenes in Greek literature. The doors are sealed and the suitors realize too late that they are trapped inside the hall. Odysseus, his son Telemachus, and two loyal servants begin killing them one by one. There is no escape and no negotiation. The men who spent years consuming another man's house die inside it.
It is a violent ending, but Homer wants you to understand something important. The real danger to Odysseus was never just the monsters and storms along the journey. It was the possibility that someone else might take his place while he was gone.
When Odysseus finally returns, he reminds everyone in Ithaca of a simple truth:
A man's home is never truly his unless he is willing to fight for it.
A powerful scene in the Odyssey comes when Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca after twenty years of war and wandering.
You'd expect the story to end with a great celebration: with the hero coming home and the family reunited.
Homer does something far stranger.
Odysseus arrives disguised as a beggar, because Athena warns him that the palace has been taken over by more than a hundred suitors who have been living there for years, eating his food, drinking his wine, and pressuring his wife Penelope to marry one of them. They believe Odysseus is dead and in their minds the kingdom is already theirs.
So the king of Ithaca walks through his own halls dressed in rags while the men stealing his house sit comfortably at his tables. They mock him, throw scraps at him, and one of them even strikes him, and Odysseus takes it. The same man who blinded the Cyclops now stands quietly while strangers insult him in his own home. Homer tells us his heart burns inside his chest and that he wants to attack them immediately, yet he restrains himself and waits.
Instead of striking, Odysseus studies the room carefully. He counts the men, watches their habits, and observes which servants remain loyal and which have betrayed him. He delays his revenge until the moment is right.
Eventually Penelope announces a contest and brings out Odysseus' great bow, declaring that she will marry the man who can string it and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads lined up in a row. One by one the suitors try and fail, because none of them can even bend the bow. Then the beggar asks for a turn. The suitors laugh at first, but the bow is eventually handed to him.
Odysseus takes it in his hands and strings it effortlessly. Homer says the sound of the bowstring tightening rings through the hall like the note of a swallow. Then he places an arrow on the string and sends it cleanly through all twelve axe heads.
In that moment the beggar disappears. Odysseus turns the bow toward the suitors and reveals who he is.
What follows is one of the most brutal scenes in Greek literature. The doors are sealed and the suitors realize too late that they are trapped inside the hall. Odysseus, his son Telemachus, and two loyal servants begin killing them one by one. There is no escape and no negotiation. The men who spent years consuming another man's house die inside it.
It is a violent ending, but Homer wants you to understand something important. The real danger to Odysseus was never just the monsters and storms along the journey. It was the possibility that someone else might take his place while he was gone. When Odysseus finally returns, he reminds everyone in Ithaca of a simple truth:
A man's home is never truly his unless he is willing to fight for it.
Elegantly put!
Forgive me.
My mind is beset with chaotic thoughts at the moment.
~ William Ransom, in Outlander
Revolutionary Wisdom
Act worthy of yourselves.
~ Dr. Joseph Warren
Dr. Warren died on the battlefield at Bunker Hill, 1775
[sob...]
Cry as much as you want to.
But make sure when you're finished, you never cry for the same reason again.
I've always thought this is true...
Before you argue, build the strongest possible version of the opposing view.Not the weak, easy-to-attack version. The version that actually challenges you.The person who can argue both sides clearly is the only one who truly understands the problem.
~ read on X (twitter thread)
Unsettling truth about today's healthcare
A healthy patient is a lost client.
~ an unsettling line in the film Healthcare Decoded, that explores the incentives, pressures, and hidden structures shaping modern medicine
Indeed
Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, social justice.
~ Thomas Sowell
Nutrition 101
Stop eating like a child.
Stop eating pancakes for breakfast or ordering Panda Express for lunch. Stop it with stress snacking between meals.
Eat meats, veggies, fruits, single ingredient whole foods.
Control the foods you put in your mouth.
Eat like a damn adult.
~ Dan Go
Peace and Love
I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.
~ Red Cloud, Chief of the Oglala Lakota tribe
Live every moment
Life is a heartbreaking, gorgeous blip in the universe,
Everything matters and nothing does.
What has always been certain:
Time is both forever and achingly finite.
But what a shame it would be not to live every moment.
~ Star Fleet: Academy, The Life of the Stars
I remember the feeling
The Way You Look Tonight
Some day, when I'm awfully lowWhen the world is coldI will feel a glow just thinking of youAnd the way you look tonightYes, you're lovely, with your smile so warmAnd your cheeks so softThere is nothing for me but to love youAnd the way you look tonightWith each word your tenderness growsTearin' my fear apartAnd that laugh..wrinkles your noseTouches my foolish heartLovely ... Never, never changeKeep that breathless charmWon't you please arrange it?'Cause I love youJust the way you look tonight
~ Jerome Kern, lyrics by Dorothy Fields (popularly sung by Frank Sinatra)
I'm a fool, indeed...
I'm a fool to want youI'm a fool to want youTo want a love that can't be trueA love that's there for others tooI'm a fool to hold youSuch a fool to hold youTo seek a kiss not mine aloneTo share a kiss the devil has knownTime and time again I said I'd leave youTime and time again I went awayBut then would come the time when I would need youAnd once again these words I had to sayI'm a fool to want youPity me I need youI know it's wrong it must be wrongBut right or wrong I can't get alongWithout youTime and time againI said I'd leave youTime and time againI went awayBut then would come the time when I would need youAnd once again these words I'd have to sayTake me backI love youPity me I need youI know it's wrong it must be wrongBut right or wrong I can't get alongWithout you
~ Written by Frank Sinatra / Jack Wolf / Joel S. Herron
Frank Sinatra's love song to Ava Gardner
Fitness in a nutshell
Steps. Sleep. Weights. Nature.That covers 90% of the game.Stop overcomplicating it.
~ Dan Go
Choose happiness
Happiness is a choice, not a result.Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy.No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy.Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.
~ Ralph Marston
Traits
It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system.And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success.And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
~ John Steinbeck, in Canery Row
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