I read Tara Isabella Burton’s Strange Rites in 2023 – a book about the decline of religion and what’s replacing it. Since then, I have been connecting a few dots. This is the pattern I see.
For most of human history, we lived in communities of circumstance. We were born into a home, a town, a religion, a trade. We didn’t have much of a choice, we just inherited it. And while it had its flaws, many people made it work.
(more…)I read something beautiful on a LinkedIn post sometime back. Yes, miracles do happen.
उन्हें कामयाबी में सुकून नजर आया तो वो दौड़ते गए,
हमें सुकून में कामयाबी दिखी तो हम ठहर गए !
Not that I had scaled some Himalayan peak of success, but the first line fits my 30s, and the second, my 40s. The underlying mindsets are different, and so are the journeys that give me joy. But it took the larger life journey and the choices of my past self to get here.
(more…)You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue (via James Clear)
I first read Kavi’s post on tattoos, which started with how he turned down even a temporary one. I could relate to that, and the post made me wonder what was my discomfort with getting a tattoo.
My immediate thought was optionality. But thanks to some excellent coincidence, right below that post (in my feed) was one by The Marginalian which gave me a different perspective.
(more…)We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that we pay for these comforting illusions with our very aliveness.
Some would say kids are spoilt these days. I’m not going there, but kids are definitely spoilt for choice when it comes to chasing their interests, academic pressures notwithstanding. But what’s a deep interest and what’s a fad? What’s a passion and what is a routine that has overstayed its welcome?
I thought it was an excellent reminder that not all childhood interests need to become lifelong pursuits. Maybe a reminder for adults too – both influencers suffering burnouts as well as us standard mortals. For those interests that are staying beyond their shelf lives, and for those that haven’t seen the light of day, because they are dictated by habit/self image/identity?
I wrote this on LinkedIn in the context of a Hyundai ad that ended with “Never give up on finding what you love. There’s joy in every journey.”
(more…)The story thus far is reflected in three of my posts. I referred to the Marshmallow Mind late last year in Marshmellowing – how I have been optimising my life and decisions for optionality. Placing myself such that circumstance/environment doesn’t cause a decision I’ll regret. Identifying with the ‘Ozark’ credo that “People make choices. Choices have consequences.” I still do, but I also see secondary consequences, and this post is about those.
As I wrote in Marshmellowing: The Prequel, my marshmallow mind is the result of ‘responsibility’ winning. It comes with costs. The marshmallow mind continues to plan the future and make predictions. That creates and reinforces an identity and a bunch of problems.
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