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In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll noted that every animal exists in its own unique perceptual world — a smorgasbord of sights, smells, sounds and textures that it can sense but that other species might not. These stimuli defined what von Uexküll called the Umwelt — an animal’s bespoke sliver of reality. A tick’s Umwelt is limited to the touch of hair, the odor that emanates from skin and the heat of warm blood. A human’s Umwelt is far wider but doesn’t include the electric fields that sharks and platypuses are privy to, the infrared radiation that rattlesnakes and vampire bats track or the ultraviolet light that most sighted animals can see.

The Umwelt concept is one of the most profound and beautiful in biology. It tells us that the all-encompassing nature of our subjective experience is an illusion, and that we sense just a small fraction of what there is to sense. It hints at flickers of the magnificent in the mundane, and the extraordinary in the ordinary. And it is almost antidramatic: It reveals that frogs, snakes, ticks and other animals can be doing extraordinary things even when they seem to be doing nothing at all.

~ Ed Yong, NY Times Opinion, 6-21-22

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When people tell me that platonic love is as strong as or stronger than romantic and familial love, I’m reminded that I can’t understand it. I’m fine with the fact that I don’t understand it, but remembering that I can’t is always an “…oh… right…” sort of awkward feeling.

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recovery will not happen overnight. recovery will not fully heal you. recovery will not make you happy all of the time. recovery will not always look pretty.

recovery will have ups and downs forever. recovery will make you grow as a person. recovery will make being alive feel less hard. recovery will come in many, many forms.

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btw what you consume shapes your perception. if you flood your mind with cynicism, chaos, and uninspired content, you dull your ability to see beauty. curating your inputs—art, literature, film, music, people—rewires your vision. you get to choose which version of life you experience...

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Joy Sullivan, from “Culpable”, Instructions for Traveling West

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everything is a miracle don't act so surprised! don't undercut it! it's happening all the time!

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cool disgust response dude, who taught it to you? your peers? your mom?😂

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I mastered detachment when I accepted that every relationship ends at some point either in separation or death. We live in a world where people's feelings change overnight and there's nothing we can do to control that. The key to detachment is learning how to feel happy, whole and safe under any condition. Any other person's inability to love you is not a reflection of your self-worth.

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don’t forget that it’s your life. it’s not school’s life, it’s not work’s life, it’s not your family or your partner’s life—it’s perpetually your life, for better or worse. what do you want from this life? forget happy, what motivates you to live? why are you here?

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“Don’t be afraid to suffer; return that heaviness to the earth’s own weight; heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnet IV,” trans. Stephen Mitchell, in Duino Elegies & The Sonnets To Orpheus

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an hour long album can feed as many people as you want. theres no limit to music

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trauma therapy has been swell