“I think, therefore I am” is based on the blind assumption that I can even exist at all apart from the basic interconnected systems of life, such as family, oxygen, nutrients, and the sun.

Even though I can think, my thinking self was not created in a vacuum. I did not just appear out of nowhere, independently self-actualized apart from everything else. I am, because all these other things are.

Whether or not your brain is in a vat, without the life supports and energy provided to you by the planet, your brain would not be able to contemplate whether the earth is real in the first place.

Life under the sun is impossible without the sun.

-Caesura Letters, photo by Mariam Sitchinava

Neil Gaiman on money as a motivator:

Whenever I did something where the only reason for doing it was money — and this was a lesson that I learned beginning with being a 23-year-old author hired to write a book about Duran Duran — that whenever I did something and the only reason for doing it was the money, normally something would go terribly wrong. And I normally wouldn’t get the money and then I wouldn’t have anything. Whereas, whenever I did anything where what prompted my doing it was being interested, being excited, caring, thinking this is going to be fun, even if things went wrong and I didn’t get the money, I had something I was proud of…

It’s something that, you know, I forget. Sometimes somebody waves a paycheck and I go, “I don’t really have any reason for doing it, I’m not interested. But, yes, what amazing money, how can I say no?” And then I do it, and then I regret it. And you can almost feel the universe itself sighing, like, “Why doesn’t he learn this one?”

from Neil Gaiman Turns His Grad Speech Into ‘Good Art’ on NPR, photo by nina ahn. 

Andrew Zolli on Resilience: 

We’re in a moment now as a species, as societies, as communities, at all different levels, where we’re experiencing increasing amounts of volatility. So 10 years ago we used to marvel…that a butterfly could flap its wings on one side of the planet and you could have a hurricane on the other side of the planet. In an era where every butterfly is connected to every hurricane, you start to worry about the flapping of those butterfly wings — “What can we do to stop that?” Because the ecological system, the economic system, the geopolitical system, the climate system, the food security system, are all connected to each other in ways that cause very complex, highly unpredictable, nonlinear outcomes. So all of those systems being connected, leads us to a place where increasingly instead of trying to find an equilibrium in a planet that’s out of balance, we also have to try and manage with the unbalances. We have to manage in a world that’s intrinsically out of order. And that means protecting - especially vulnerable people - from the shocks and disruptions that are becoming the hallmark of the age.

from A Shift to Humility: Andrew Zolli on Resilience and Expanding the Edge of Change, photo via Mariam Sitchinava.

“Today we outsource the task of education to school boards and universities, and we tend to think of learning itself as more fiscally transactional than relationally transformational. However, it still behooves each one of us to be the apprentice of a master. By offering ourselves in humility to the instruction of another we subjugate our own blinding pride. There are things you can learn only by sitting at the feet of a maestro, and this is no less true today than it was in centuries past. We only have the capacity to personally discover so much in a lifetime, but we multiply this capacity when we listen to the discoveries of others.

Today: make a list of your teachers. Of course, they need not be formal instructors. They might be coworkers, generational elders, or leaders.

Who are the people around you who carry wisdom and life experience like the clothes they wear? Identify these people, seek them out, and then, when you are in their presence, try to say as little as possible and listen as much as you can.”

-Caesura Letters, photo via elaineflynn

–

Seth Godin echoes Kurt Vonnegut, who in the seventh of his 8 timeless tips on writing advised, “Write to please just one person.” (via explore-blog)

───≫ This is the advice I give as well. I say, write to one person. Not for. I like thinking of writing as an exchange rather than a service. If you write, write to someone you love. Write from the heart.

If I’m looking for a job, I write to the one person I want to be hired by. If I’m marketing a product, I write to the one person I know, personally, that I’d flip a cartwheel for if they bought my product. 

Make it personal so it’s real to you. That’s how it will flow and is easy. That’s how it will translate and move others.

Viral? Yes, forget viral. What makes something go viral is connection. Focus on connection.

To all the mothers. 

We need life jackets to float
On words which leave so much unsaid

How can this not sound like sophistry
To justify absence from your thought, your bed?

But this hemorrhaging of language
Still keeps the best phrase locked in my head.

Easy to talk of loneliness, of ageing, damning
Those who would be Presidents and Generals of dead

Forgetting the detail, the paticular hunger
Of someone you know waiting to be fed.

And how I’m doing it again, drifting on words,
More lines for the simple thing not said.

-E.A. Markham

– @BMRideas from The Gift Is Giant (via fridaytalk)

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

-Robert Frost

fridaytalk:

Intuition and reason cannot work without the other. We reason with our intuition, and intuitively use our reasoning.

There are moments that one is more dominant—when we follow our “gut instinct.”

There are times to act quickly or spontaneously, and there are times we need to slow…

Is there music more beautiful than this? Name it, please. 

– @BMRideas (via fridaytalk)

Puzzles can seem overwhelming. Especially when you first begin and you dump out all the pieces onto the floor.

We all know things, but sometimes we panic.

Sometimes the things we know aren’t the things we think we’re supposed to know. We panic. We have atypical knowledge to bring to the table. It makes us second guess, insecure. Maybe we don’t think we know much at all.

But you know something, don’t you?

If your ship sank and a handful of passengers survived in a life raft in the middle of the ocean, your knowledge would be vital to your survival. In fact, it would be vital to the survival of everyone in that raft.

You know something. What is it?

The things you know only you know because only you have had your life experiences and only you see the way you see and only you can offer the insight you can offer.

One person might work from the outside in because that’s what they know.

There is no right or wrong.

photo by romanlily