Simplicity is the consequence of refined emotions.
~ Jean D’Alembert
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Simplicity →
Then you read →
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was reading books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. An artist is a sort of emotional historian.
~ James Baldwin
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Not forever →
At some point in our lives we realize that we aren’t spring chickens anymore and we become a bit less interested in looking good naked and more interested in feeling better and making the most of the rest of our lives. It’s a hard thing to slowly realize you aren’t going to live forever.
But once you accept it, you can start to address it.
~ Jarlo Ilano from, How to Live Forever (or at least stay healthy for a really long time)
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I talk a lot about movement, and the people over at GMB are top-notch. If you’re looking for something (to inspire you, get you moving, solve a specific issue, etc.) then go there.
I also talk a lot about sleep. In recent months I’ve decided my mattress is done. I’ve been refusing to spend the insane amount to replace it (and yes, I’ve heard of that brand you’re considering telling me about.) Instead I chose to lean into sleeping on really hard surfaces.
I’ve been sleeping on a 2-inch-thick air mattress, on the floor, for a week. Thoracic extension— delightful. Hip extension as an antidote to desk-sitting— delightful. Even lying on my side requires new adaptations— delightful. As it happens, I already have a platform bed with Tatami mats. Based on my week’s experiment (and countless nights sleeping on my air mattress on host’s floors) I’ve shoved the western-style mattress off the platform and ordered a traditional “floor mattress” which goes atop tatami mats. We shall see.
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May 07, 2023 — #31 →
Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1000 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/31
False dichotomies →
It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; A world where we are always moral and our enemies immoral.
~ Saul D. Alinsky
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Age-old struggle →
The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle—the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.
~ Douglas MacArthur
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Wisdom and learning →
Seek to learn constantly while you live; Do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.
~ Solon
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Extraneous as passing fiction →
After this era of great pilots is gone, as the era of great sea captains has gone — each nudged aside by the march of inventive genius, by steel cogs and copper discs and hair-thin wires on white faces that are dumb, but speak — it will be found, I think, that all the science of flying has been captured in the breadth of an instrument board, but not the religion of it. One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day this will be an airborne life. But by then men will have forgotten how to fly; they will be passengers on machines whose conductors are carefully promoted to familiarity with labelled buttons, and in whose minds the knowledge of the sky and the wind and the way of weather will be extraneous as passing fiction.
~ Beryl Markham from, A Different Solitude: Pioneering Aviator Beryl Markham on What She Learned About Life in the Bottomless Night
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As if there’s anything I could write which would add to that.
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