Human nature is to put boundaries around the loss, so we know it’s something that happens to other people. We say that they’re in a better place or to just remember the good times, because if we spoke the truth – that tragedy comes for us all, that sometimes life is random and cruel and painful and beyond comprehension – I mean, how would we even function?
Death has been on my mind a lot lately. Both of my kids continually ask about it, and a coworker of mine is grieving a very recent death in their family.
This is the conclusion I inevitably come to: death does come for us all, randomly and painfully and mercilessly.
The only way I’ve found to cope with the concept of death is to be grateful to be born in the first place. What a stroke of luck we have to even be alive.
In the words of Jeff Mangum: “How strange it is to be anything at all.”
đź”— a linked post to
moretothat.com »
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originally shared here on
Anytime you try to control or reverse disorder, you introduce tension. This is true on a sociological level, where any attempt to organize people inevitably leads to rebellion. But more relevantly, it’s also true at the individual level, and is particularly poignant in our desire to control time.
This same thought (trying to control disorder) has been going through my head a lot lately, but I’ve only ever applied it to political discourse or workplace drama. I’ve never once thought to apply it to time.
Burnout is often associated with working too much, but the real reason it happens is because you have defined yourself by what you produce. It’s not just the exertion of energy spent during your working hours, but the exertion of thought spent during the time you’re not working. It lives in the moment where you’re physically with your family, but mentally planning out what you need to do next. Or when you keep looking at the time when you should just be enjoying lunch.
Again, as a recovering entrepreneur, I’m only now becoming aware of how awful my compulsive need to check in on my team had become.
I’m striving in 2023 to better utilize time as an ally, and to build back the healthy habits that I’ve surrendered in the name of maximum productivity and profitability. Those habits include things I actually used to do (5K run or 2.5mi walk every morning, journaling) and things I keep telling myself I want to do (yoga, biking, playing with my kids, dating my wife).
I wanted to recapture the excitement I used to feel over finding out something that not very many people knew — the satisfaction I used to get from wrestling with things, spinning them around and trying to see the different angles. Before it all got buried beneath analytics and followers and “impact” and gimmicks and waiting for the next round of layoffs.
Not knowing how to say any of this out loud, I didn’t tell anyone. I just slowed down — backed off of pitching editors, stopped picking up late night phone calls from sources. I shifted my focus to editing other people’s work, which is less stressful and also pays better. I wrote some personal essays and took some college classes and sat on my kitchen floor trying to imagine what my Twitter bio would say if it didn’t start with “Freelance journalist.”
When I left JMG in March, this exact sort of identity crisis was a huge marble that wouldn’t stop rattling around my brain.
In the past nine months, I’ve become more comfortable letting go of my identities. Besides, what good are identities anyway?
My interests, my career path, my marital and paternal status, being a “runner”, being “the guy who always gets his steps in”, being “the guy who runs an app development company”… those are all tiny parts that add up to the whole.
My third grade teacher used to make us listen to a song every day that had a chorus which said “I can be the best I can be.”
And I think at this point in my life, that’s all I need to be.
The ultimate lesson, then, is to remind yourself that no, your current life is not normal.
It’s super weird and super specific, and you can completely change the damned thing in as many ways as you like and you absolutely will adapt and be able to handle it.
Coscarelli told me that, over the years, many wonderful and generous women had come to her clinic, and some of them had died very quickly. Yikes. I had to come clean: Not only was I un-wonderful. I was also kind of a bitch.
God love her, she came through with exactly what I needed to hear: “I’ve seen some of the biggest bitches come in, and they’re still alive.”
And that, my friends, was when I had my very first positive thought. I imagined all those bitches getting healthy, and I said to myself, I think I’m going to beat this thing.
This whole article is good advice for those of us who have never had cancer.
Hell, this is good advice for life in general. Everyone deals with different situations in life, and how they persevere is just as unique.
It’s more important to learn how to show up for those you care about than it is to push your opinions on them.
What Happens to Your Brain When You Stop Believing in God
đź”— a linked post to
vice.com »
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originally shared here on
We arduously convince young children to believe in Santa, and they do. Testimony dictates religious beliefs, too. For example, psychologist Rebekah Richert has found that if you frame a fantastical story as a religious story, children raised in religious households will believe it. If you don't frame it religiously, they'll call your bluff.
When we get to college, however, cultural testimony changes. An analytical, scientific view reigns, and there's little room for God. We staggered home from parties pontificating on the pointless evil of Western religion. We made friends by cynically confessing our doubt. College is "very likely to challenge the more conservative belief systems we have in our brains," Grafman says. It deflates our adolescent faith.
Historian Christina Kotchemidova argues that people were motivated mainly by cultural forces, not practical considerations. “Etiquette codes of the past demanded that the mouth be carefully controlled; beauty standards likewise called for a small mouth,” she says in her 2005 paper on the history of smiling in photographs.
Though photography was still relatively new in the 1850s, portraiture was not, and tradition said that proper people should not grin or bare their teeth in their pictures. Big smiles were considered silly, childish, or downright wicked.
When we were in Ireland, we met up with a friend and took a few pictures. While snapping pictures, I realized this person decide not to smile in any of the pictures I took of them.
At one point, I went on to jokingly tease them about this, because in my opinion, I find pictures to be more authentic when people show their smiles.
In retrospect, that was pretty selfish of me to do. Beauty is subjective, and how someone chooses to pose themselves in a photo is frankly none of my business.
Maybe that's why we collectively choose to opt for a "silly photo" after taking a serious one. It gives us all a chance to take one that's socially appropriate for the holiday card, and one that is socially appropriate for Instagram.
Anyway, I'm gonna try not to force my kids into smiling for pics anymore. I'll still prompt them, but if they want to smile, then cool. If they don't, then cool.
