Marie Kondo

It is not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure. This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them. The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.

-from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (p118)

Victoria Sweet

My goal was fixed: I would walk to Compostela ─no matter what. And with my goal fixed, without self-doubt and the minute-by-minute attention to frustrations and disappointments, I discovered something. Underneath the surface actions, events, and partying of the path was silence. Even when it was noisy, that silence was underneath activity. That quiet was solid and always accessible. I could depend on it; I could return to it at any time, in any emergency. It was the quiet of pilgrimage, and it was worth the meseta.*

. . . .

Except for us, the cathedral was empty. The monk took us through another side door into the dark cloister. A charcoal brazier was on the stones, and the monk gestured for us to sit down around it. Then he handed out black cards and told us they would symbolize the sins we wanted to get rid of. Is worry a sin? I asked myself. I sure would like to get rid of it. I decided that it was. Worry about the future seemed uncharitable somehow, toward God, after everything I'd experienced on the pilgrimage─so many days I'd worried would be bad had turned out so well! And so many days when my good anticipations had turned out so bad! I didn't know whether worry was a sin, but I threw it in the brazier.

*high plateau in Northern Spain

-from God's Hotel, p332-333

Yuval Noah Harari

Ignorance by itself is not too dangerous. If you combine it with power, this is a toxic mix. 

Conversation

D: I came across an article* from Rutgers Today published in 2014. Apparently, researchers concluded that the overall success rate of a marriage is higher if the wife is happy. If the husband is happy, it doesn't contribute much to the marriage, but if the wife is happy it could mean everything. When she's happy, she does more to make everyone happy. Her happiness overflows. If he's happy or unhappy, it doesn't really matter because men tend to think about themselves first anyway, so their mood doesn't have an outward pouring and affect everyone in the same way.
N: Um, I hope they didn't waste money paying those researchers.
D: What do you mean?
N: This is not news. There's a reason for the saying, "Happy wife, happy life."
D: Is this really something everyone already knows?
N: And its companion phrase, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."
D: That's true.
N: I know.

*I was cataloging a newly arrived book (Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu) at the library last night and flipped through so I could give it the appropriate call number. The article was referenced in the end notes of the book.

Malene Rydahl

According to Professor Bjornskov, there are a number of basic universal factors that contribute to a nation's happiness: a democratic political system, a certain level of national prosperity, a functioning judicial system, and the absence of war. He estimates that thirty to forty countries meet these criteria. Once this foundation is in place, other factors influence the level of happiness, in particular trust in others and the freedom (or possibility) to choose one's own way in life.

--Happy as a Dane (2017)

Dalai Lama XIV and Desmond Tutu

It helps no one if you sacrifice your joy because others are suffering. We people who care must be attractive, must be filled with joy, so that others recognize that caring, that helping and being generous are not a burden, they are a joy. Give the world your love, your service, your healing, but you can also give it your joy. This, too, is a gift.

--from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV and Desmond Tutu

Edith Wharton

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.

Rebecca Solnit

Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. When you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

--from Hope in the Dark

Joe Biden

"The president and I have concluded that there's no value in making that ad hominem argument," he told me of Obama. "It gets you nowhere."

 "Question a man's judgment, not his motives," Mansfield instructed.

"It's one thing to say: 'I think the proposal on the following is a serious mistake. I think it's gonna do the following damage.' It's another thing to say, 'The guy's a fucking idiot, and he is an egomaniac who's a whatever.' "

 "It's like a Rubik's cube trying to figure this guy out," Biden sighed. "We have no freakin' idea what he's gonna do."

"Family has been central for us — that's our baseline," Obama told me. "We both feel freer to do what we think is right because if it doesn't work out, our families will still love us."

He has little patience with Democrats who want to move either left or right. " 'We gotta move to the center,' 'We gotta move to those white guys,' 'We gotta move to those working-class people' or 'We gotta double down on the social agenda.' " It's a false choice, he said: "They are totally compatible. I have never said anything to the A.C.L.U. that I wouldn't say to the Chamber of Commerce."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/magazine/joe-biden-i-wish-to-hell-id-just-kept-saying-the-exact-same-thing.html

Alan Lightman

I don't know why we long so for permanence, why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs. With futility, we cling to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. We visit and revisit the old neighborhood where we grew up, searching for the remembered grove of trees and the little fence. We clutch our old photographs. In our churches and synagogues and mosques, we pray to the everlasting and eternal. Yet, in every nook and cranny, nature screams at the top of her lungs that nothing lasts, that it is all passing away. All that we see around us, including our own bodies, is shifting and evaporating and one day will be gone.

NEH

D: Why is that one your favorite?
N: Because it coils well. And it's yellow so I can always find it in the shop.

--Talking about extension cords

Cal Newport

Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom. 

Once this Pavlovian connection is solidified, it becomes hard to give difficult tasks the unbroken concentration they require, and your brain simply won’t tolerate such a long period without a fix. Indeed, part of my own rejection of social media comes from this fear that these services will diminish my ability to concentrate — the skill on which I make my living.

. . . . .A dedication to cultivating your social media brand is a fundamentally passive approach to professional advancement. It diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter. The latter activity is seductive, especially for many members of my generation who were raised on this message, but it can be disastrously counterproductive.

~From Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. New York Times, November 19, 2016

Jerry Isaak

“Technology and social media have fundamentally changed the nature of solitude and remoteness. Now our peers and online communities may travel everywhere with us on our smartphones. They are an ever-present audience generating pressure on our decisions in ways that were not possible in a predigital era. For many young people this is the only reality they have ever known.”

~Jerry Isaak, college professor and American Mountain Guides Association ski guide who has studied the role of social media in backcountry decision-making, in Avalanche educators grapple with social media’s influence on backcountry travelers’ decision making, Denver Post 10/10/2016.

Ben Mattlin

The perseverance to live fully with a profound disability comes, I think, in part from honestly facing your own powerlessness and frailty, and recognizing how much worse things have been and could still be. This can instill a delight in the now. In living with a disability, you’ve already dealt with much of what other people fear most, and if you come out on the other side you are, by definition, a survivor. The resolve required, and begrudging acceptance of what you can’t change, may bring a kind of wisdom.

~From A disabled life is a life worth living NYTimes Oct 5 2016

Emily Post

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.