Reading/Writing
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We work in the dark – we do what we can
There is a quote that I have been writing in journals and on walls and living with since I was in high school. “We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” ~ Henry James, The Middle Years. To me, this has always meant that we work quietly, in the dark, to make things better and the quiet and the darkness do not diminish the passion that is behind the action, but rather, emphasize it. I was brought up in a religion and culture…
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Unlikely Warriors
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If Everyone is Super, No One Is
It’s not that I couldn’t understand his point. The scene: an outdoor dinner table, surrounded by people sharing food and coming down off a community salsa dance lesson. As we ate, one of our guests and I got into a rather impassioned conversation when he took me off-guard by saying, “There’s no such thing as talent.” His contention was that everyone, if they work hard, can do anything well. I answered that this is the kind of “everyone gets a medal!” thinking that is making us weak. So who was right? Is talent a myth? I was born in 1981, which means that I was part of that strange transition…
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My Problems with Self-Acceptance
I have major problems with self-acceptance. Here’s the thing – I work in an industry where we are constantly trying to help people to love and accept themselves and I understand that this is a key to feeling good and healing both physically and emotionally and all the rest of that. We say it like they are the same thing: self-love and self-acceptance, and in reality, they have to be pretty closely linked because how can you love that which you don’t accept? And yet this is where I struggle. For one simple reason that might sound silly when I say it out loud, but here it goes: I want…
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Unlikely Warriors
Thoughts on ‘The Warrior Ethos’, By Steven Pressfield Tomorrow I begin Seth Godin’s altMBA program. Our first writing prompt was to create a one-page actionable summary of a book most will not have read that changed our minds. This is mine. I’m the kind of person that my father would refer to as a ‘Bleeding heart liberal hippy’. As I write this, I have a runt goat with a splint in the yard that I have been helping to eat at 4-hour increments rather than take him back behind the barn like any reasonable farmer would. So what am I doing reviewing a book about Stoic philosophy; a book that…
