{"id":149905,"date":"2019-12-23T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=149905"},"modified":"2019-12-16T08:28:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T08:28:24","slug":"13-life-learnings-from-13-years-of-brain-pickings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/13-life-learnings-from-13-years-of-brain-pickings\/","title":{"rendered":"13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings"},"content":{"rendered":"

More Fluid Reflections on Keeping a Solid Center<\/em><\/p>\n

On October 23, 2006, Brain Pickings<\/em> was born as a plain-text email to seven friends. It was then, and continues to be, a labor of love and ledger of curiosity, although the mind and heart from which it sprang have changed \u2014 have grown, I hope \u2014 tremendously. At the end of the first decade, I told its improbable origin story<\/a> and drew from its evolution the ten most important things this all-consuming daily endeavor taught me about writing and living \u2014 largely notes to myself, perhaps best thought of as resolutions in reverse, that may or may not be useful to others.<\/p>\n

Now, as Brain Pickings<\/em> turns thirteen \u2014 the age at which, at least in the Germanic languages, childhood tips to adolescence; the age at which I first competed in the European Math Olympics; the legal marriage age in my homeland; the number of British colonies that germinated the United States; the number of moons revolving around Neptune; a handsome prime number \u2014 I feel compelled to add three more learnings from the past three years, which have been in some ways the most difficult and in some ways the most beautiful of my life; the years in which I made the things of which I am proudest: created The Universe in Verse<\/em><\/a>, composed Figuring<\/em><\/a>, and finally published, after eight years of labor, A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

With dad, year 0<\/p><\/div>\n

Here are the initial ten learnings<\/a>, as published in 2016, which I continue to stand and live by:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.<\/strong> Cultivate that capacity for \u201cnegative capability.\u201d<\/a> We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our \u201copinions\u201d based on superficial impressions or the borrowed ideas of others, without investing the time and thought that cultivating true conviction necessitates. We then go around asserting these donned opinions and clinging to them as anchors to our own reality. It\u2019s enormously disorienting to simply say, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d But it\u2019s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right \u2014 even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.<\/li>\n
  2. Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone.<\/strong> As Paul Graham observed<\/a>, \u201cprestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you\u2019d like to like.\u201d Those extrinsic motivators are fine and can feel life-affirming in the moment, but they ultimately don\u2019t make it thrilling to get up in the morning and gratifying to go to sleep at night \u2014 and, in fact, they can often distract and detract from the things that do offer those deeper rewards.<\/li>\n
  3. Be generous.<\/strong> Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It\u2019s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life\u2019s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.<\/li>\n
  4. Build pockets of stillness into your life.<\/strong> Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming<\/a>, even to boredom<\/a>. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations. Without this essential stage of unconscious processing<\/a>, the entire flow of the creative process<\/a> is broken. Most important, sleep<\/strong>. Besides being the greatest creative aphrodisiac<\/a>, sleep also affects our every waking moment<\/a>, dictates our social rhythm<\/a>, and even mediates our negative moods<\/a>. Be as religious and disciplined about your sleep as you are about your work. We tend to wear our ability to get by on little sleep as some sort of badge of honor that validates our work ethic. But what it really is is a profound failure of self-respect and of priorities. What could possibly be more important than your health and your sanity, from which all else springs?<\/li>\n
  5. When people tell you who they are, Maya Angelou<\/a> famously advised, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you<\/em> are, don\u2019t believe them.<\/strong> You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you.<\/li>\n
  6. Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.<\/strong> Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living \u2014 for, as Annie Dillard memorably put it<\/a>, \u201chow we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.\u201d<\/li>\n
  7. \u201cExpect anything worthwhile to take a long time.\u201d<\/strong> This is borrowed<\/a> from the wise and wonderful Debbie Millman<\/a>, for it\u2019s hard to better capture something so fundamental yet so impatiently overlooked in our culture of immediacy. The myth of the overnight success is just that \u2014 a myth \u2014 as well as a reminder that our present definition of success needs serious retuning<\/a>. As I\u2019ve reflected elsewhere<\/a>, the flower doesn\u2019t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we\u2019re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming<\/em>. But that\u2019s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one\u2019s character and destiny.<\/li>\n
  8. Seek out what magnifies your spirit.<\/strong> Patti Smith, in discussing William Blake and her creative influences<\/a>, talks about writers and artists who magnified her spirit \u2014 it\u2019s a beautiful phrase and a beautiful notion. Who are the people, ideas, and books that magnify your spirit? Find them, hold on to them, and visit them often. Use them not only as a remedy once spiritual malaise has already infected your vitality but as a vaccine administered while you are healthy to protect your radiance.<\/li>\n
  9. Don\u2019t be afraid to be an idealist.<\/strong> There is much to be said for our responsibility as creators and consumers of that constant dynamic interaction we call culture \u2014 which side of the fault line between catering and creating are we to stand on? The commercial enterprise is conditioning us to believe that the road to success is paved with catering to existing demands \u2014 give the people cat GIFs, the narrative goes, because cat GIFs are what the people want. But E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted<\/a> half a century ago that the role of the writer is \u201cto lift people up, not lower them down\u201d \u2014 a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society. Supply creates its own demand. Only by consistently supplying it can we hope to increase the demand for the substantive over the superficial \u2014 in our individual lives and in the collective dream called culture.<\/li>\n
  10. Don\u2019t just resist cynicism \u2014 fight it actively.<\/strong> Fight it in yourself, for this ungainly beast lays dormant in each of us, and counter it in those you love and engage with, by modeling its opposite. Cynicism often masquerades as nobler faculties and dispositions, but is categorically inferior. Unlike that great Rilkean life-expanding doubt<\/a>, it is a contracting force. Unlike critical thinking, that pillar of reason<\/a> and necessary counterpart to hope<\/a>, it is inherently uncreative, unconstructive, and spiritually corrosive. Life, like the universe itself, tolerates no stasis \u2014 in the absence of growth, decay usurps the order. Like all forms of destruction, cynicism is infinitely easier and lazier than construction. There is nothing more difficult yet more gratifying in our society than living with sincerity and acting from a place of largehearted, constructive, rational faith in the human spirit<\/a>, continually bending toward growth and betterment. This remains the most potent antidote to cynicism. Today, especially, it is an act of courage and resistance.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And here are the three new additions, which refine some of the subtler ideas and ideals contemplated above:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. A reflection originally offered on the cusp of Year 11, by way of a wonderful poem about pi<\/a>: Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.<\/strong> Our maps are still maps, approximating the landscape of truth from the territories of the knowable \u2014 incomplete representational models that always leave more to map, more to fathom, because the selfsame forces that made the universe also made the figuring instrument with which we try to comprehend it.<\/li>\n
    2. Because Year 12 is the year in which I finished writing Figuring<\/em><\/a> (though it emanates from my entire life), and because the sentiment, which appears in the prelude, is the guiding credo to which the rest of the book is a 576-page footnote, I will leave it as it stands: There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n
    3. In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again.<\/strong> The richest relationships are lifeboats, but they are also submarines that descend to the darkest and most disquieting places, to the unfathomed trenches of the soul where our deepest shames and foibles and vulnerabilities live, where we are less than we would like to be. Forgiveness is the alchemy by which the shame transforms into the honor and privilege of being invited into another\u2019s darkness and having them witness your own with the undimmed light of love, of sympathy, of nonjudgmental understanding. Forgiveness is the engine of buoyancy that keeps the submarine rising again and again toward the light, so that it may become a lifeboat once more.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      And since Brain Pickings<\/em> is the public record of what I privately think and feel and worry and wonder about daily, here is a time machine of thought and feeling via thirteen of the pieces I have most enjoyed writing these past thirteen years:<\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. The More Loving One<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

         <\/p>\n

        \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Big Wolf & Little Wolf: A Tender Tale of Loneliness, Belonging, and How Friendship Transforms Us<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

           <\/p>\n

          \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

            \n
          1. How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

             <\/p>\n

            \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

              \n
            1. The Difficult Art of Giving Space in Love: Rilke on Freedom, Togetherness, and the Secret to a Good Marriage<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

               <\/p>\n

              \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                \n
              1. Love, Lunacy, and a Life Fully Lived: Oliver Sacks, the Science of Seeing, and the Art of Being Seen<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                 <\/p>\n

                \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                  \n
                1. Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                   <\/p>\n

                  \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                    \n
                  1. Telling Is Listening: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Magic of Real Human Conversation<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                     <\/p>\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                      \n
                    1. The Writing of \u201cSilent Spring\u201d: Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                       <\/p>\n

                      \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                        \n
                      1. Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Moral Human Being, and Her Advice to Writers<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                         <\/p>\n

                        \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                          \n
                        1. Emily Dickinson\u2019s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                           <\/p>\n

                          \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                            \n
                          1. Patti Smith on Time, Transformation, and How the Radiance of Love Redeems the Rupture of Loss<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                             <\/p>\n

                            \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                              \n
                            1. Salvation by Words: Iris Murdoch on Language as a Vehicle of Truth and Art as a Force of Resistance to Tyranny<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                               <\/p>\n

                              \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

                                \n
                              1. A Brave and Startling Truth: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Maya Angelou\u2019s Stunning Humanist Poem That Flew to Space, Inspired by Carl Sagan<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                _______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

                                \"\"<\/a><\/em>Brain Pickings<\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em>Wired<\/em> UK and <\/em>The Atlantic<\/em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>. Email: brainpicker@brainpickings.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

                                Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                                More Fluid Reflections on Keeping a Solid Center – On October 23, 2006, Brain Pickings was born as a plain-text email to seven friends. It was then, and continues to be, a labor of love and ledger of curiosity, although the mind and heart from which it sprang have changed \u2014 have grown, I hope \u2014 tremendously. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":125273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[1177,1100],"class_list":["post-149905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational","tag-inspirational","tag-maria-popova"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}