There's a line early in Pema Chödron's Living Beautifully that stuck out to me where she says (citing a neuroscientist) that emotions naturally last only a few seconds — that (as I understood it) we prolong emotions by our own choice. That rings true to me. There
Ken McLeod's Reflections on a Silver River is a good meditation book full of good advice and insights and practices that I will nod along to and place on my shelf and which will nevertheless not deeply affect my life for years. There are lots of great ideas
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I were venerably, voraciously curious about everything, if I prosecuted that wide-ranging curiosity to the full extent of my ability for years. What if I cared to know deeply about traffic lights and economics and finance and philosophy and ethics and
(Mad libs on a distinction I got from somewhere else. Maybe here though I can't find it when I search for both terms together. I'm interested in whether this is accurate to the original definition, but I can't find that original to compare against.
You've heard of misanthropy, but what other kinds are there? First I think it helps to specify how I'm thinking of misanthropy, because that defines what other kinds look like. I think of misanthropy as a stance, or as an aspect of sullenness. I could say