Mark Twain, on the occasion of his 70th birthday

"I have achieved my 70 years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else."

Then he proceeded to explain the lifestyle that had gotten him there, which included eating mince-pie after midnight; smoking at all times when he was awake (including in bed); avoiding exercise at all costs; and living what he called "a severely moral life."

He ended his speech: "I am 70; 70, and would nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart."

Lisa Genova

I'm at the top of Rabbit Lane instead of the summit, and I'm on a handicapped snowboard instead of skis, but nothing about this experience feels less than 100 percent, less than perfect. I'm on the mountain with my family. I'm here.

--from Left Neglected

Geoff Warburton

So, in grief you're going to meet hate, anger, emotional pain, rage, terror, if you get through that, you're probably going to feel torn to pieces, you might feel crazy, you might end up in a total emotional abyss. You need to feel that emotional abyss. You need to let that abyss swallow you. So, it may feel that in that abyss a part of you is dying. And maybe, a part of you needs to die. Close off your experience of the abyss, and you close off the flow of life. Here's the thing: Block that anger, and you block your vitality. Block that fear, and you'll block your excitement. Block that deep emotional pain, and you'll block your access to compassion. Even block your hatred, and you'll block your access to peace. Block your experience of that abyss, and you will block access to the depths of who you really are and the energy that's going to take you forward.

Right in the center of that abyss, in that silence, you'll find your liberation even if you've lost the love of your life. We do that not to get away from what's hurting us, we do that --we embrace all that, all those emotions-- to connect to the flow of life. Connecting to the flow of life is what will ultimately make us happy. Happiness, for the people I came across in my journey, was about the way they traveled; it wasn't some end destination; it wasn't some place they reached when they "got over grief"; it was about how they continued to be open to their experience. If we close our experience, we're more likely actually to feel or become depressed. How many of you associate grief and loss with gloominess and depression? The thing is, grief is not depression.

Loss through bereavement can become an adventure to be had, rather than a problem to be solved.


--Geoff Warburton, The Adventure of Grief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juET61B1P98

Vijay Iyer

Speaking to your Harvard students, how would you define what makes a work of music great?

I will never say anything like that. I would never say, “This is what makes something great.” Because greatness is relative, and it’s subjective and it has to do with one’s own standard of greatness. And when you tell someone, especially in a pedagogical situation, that this is what makes something great, they don’t have a chance to really explore that for themselves. They just feel like, ‘oh, I guess that’s what I’m supposed to write down and that’s what I’m supposed to know for the exam’ and stuff like that. It’s not real.


From Ingenious: Vijay Iyer: On the science and talent of music.by Kevin Berger, Nautilus, Oct 30, 2014

Vijay Iyer is a 2013 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, a musician is versed in seeing the world through the lens of science. Iyer’s Yale undergraduate degree in math and physics paved the way to his Ph.D. in technology and the arts at the University of California, Berkeley. The jazz pianist has recorded over 15 albums and in 2012 was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat International Critics Poll.

Gabriele Oettingen

MANY people think that the key to success is to cultivate and doggedly maintain an optimistic outlook. But the truth is that positive thinking often hinders us.

Why doesn't positive thinking work the way you might assume? As my colleagues and I have discovered, dreaming about the future calms you down, measurably reducing systolic blood pressure, but it also can drain you of the energy you need to take action in pursuit of your goals. Positive thinking fools our minds into perceiving that we've already attained our goal, slackening our readiness to pursue it. 

What work[s] better is a hybrid approach that combines positive thinking with “realism.” Here’s how it works. Think of a wish. For a few minutes, imagine the wish coming true, letting your mind wander and drift where it will. Then shift gears. Spend a few more minutes imagining the obstacles that stand in the way of realizing your wish.

This simple process, which my colleagues and I call “mental contrasting,” has produced powerful results in laboratory experiments. When participants have performed mental contrasting with reasonable, potentially attainable wishes, they have come away more energized and achieved better results compared with participants who either positively fantasized or dwelt on the obstacles. 

Mental contrasting spurs us on when it makes sense to pursue a wish, and lets us abandon wishes more readily when it doesn’t, so that we can go after other, more reasonable ambitions. we found that people who engaged in mental contrasting recovered from chronic back pain better, behaved more constructively in relationships, got better grades in school and even managed stress better in the workplace.

--from "The Problem With Positive Thinking," Oct. 24, 2014, New York Times

Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg, is the author of “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation.”

Claire Creffield

Fearful of such an immense decision amid such uncertainty, I allowed myself to drift into parenthood instead of choosing it. I let other people’s expectations, the sheer normality of having children, construct a new, sociological destiny for me to replace the biological one and protect me from what seemed an impossible choice.

Even when we reassure the parents of wrongdoers that they are not to blame, we do expect them—require them—to feel guilt, to need such reassurance.

from Parenthood, the Great Moral Gamble: The decision to have a child is more ethically uncertain than you might realize in Nautilus by CLAIRE CREFFIELD June 13, 2013

Amedi chocolate bar wrapper

Chocolate. The reward of our childhood. The softness of a warm embrace. The energy that makes us want to act, create and discover. The temptation which is so sweet to surrender to. The gift we love to give and wish we'd receive a little more often.

Jimmy Carter

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.

Eknath Easwaran

It is the concentrated, focused mind that reaches people. All the great changes in the world for good and for ill have come from the impact of men and women with an overriding singleness of purpose and a concentrated mind.

The last hundred years have seen incessant turbulence, change, and danger. Around the world, people are living with a deep anxiety about the future. In such situations it is only natural to ask now and then, "Why was I born into times like these?" The answer I would give is that we have been born to be of help to others. Desperate times are a sign of a more desperate need. To make our full contribution, we need to train the mind to be at peace and then radiate that peace to those around us.

--from Blue Mountain Journal, Summer 2014

Anna Della Subin

Being in bed is now no excuse for dawdling, and no escape from the guilt that accompanies it. The voice — societal or psychological — urging us away from sloth to the pure, virtuous heights of productivity has become a sort of birdlike shriek as more individuals work from home and set their own schedules, and as the devices we use for work become alluring sirens to our own distraction. We are now able to accomplish tasks at nearly every moment, even if we prefer not to.

From "How to stop time" Anna Della Subin, NYTimes, 9/26/14

Eknath Easwaran

April 17

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master’s presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord’s presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
   – SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES

The mind does not like to meditate; it wants to wander. When someone is not doing very well in meditation, one explanation is simple: his or her mind is elsewhere. The early stages of meditation are like a primary school for the mind. At first we are simply trying to get the mind to stay on the school grounds until the last bell rings. This is all we can do at first. The mind has been playing truant for years; when we try to concentrate, it simply is not present. All we can do is stand at the doorstep and whistle, trying to call it back in.

Even if all we do in thirty minutes of meditation is to call the mind back thirty times, we have made great progress. We don’t have to wait for the day when the mind is completely still to receive immense benefits from meditation. As the Bhagavad Gita says, even a little of this discipline protects us from great dangers.

-From Words to Live By

Lena Dunham

I can never be who I was. I can simply watch her with sympathy, understanding and some measure of awe. There she goes, backpack on, headed for the subway or the airport. She did her best with her eyeliner. She learned a new word she wants to try out on you. She is ambling along. She is looking for it.

Roger Ebert

How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading.

--about his wife, Chaz. From his memoir, Life Itself.

George Bilgere

Just when you'd begun to feel

You could rely on the summer,

That each morning would deliver

The same mourning dove singing

From his station on the phone pole,

The same smell of bacon frying 

Somewhere in the neighborhood,

The same sun burning off

The coastal fog by noon,

When you could reward yourself

For a good morning's work

With lunch at the same little seaside cafe

With its shaded deck and iced tea,

The day's routine finally down

Like an old song with minor variations,

There comes that morning when the light

Tilts ever so slightly on its track,

A cool gust out of nowhere

Whirlwinds a litter of dead grass

Across the sidewalk, the swimsuits

Are piled on the sale table,

And the back of your hand,

Which you thought you knew,

Has begun to look like an old leaf.

Or the back of someone else's hand.


"August" by George Bilgere, from The Good Kiss. © Akron, 2002. 

Tony La Russa

Trust your gut; don't cover your butt.

Interview. NPR, "Morning Edition," July 25, 2014.