#meditations for mortals

[dk-thrive]

. . . perhaps you've tethered your self-esteem to the most crazy-making standard of all, 'realizing your potential'—which means you'll never get to rest, because how can you ever be sure there's not a little more potential to realize?

— Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 8, 2024) (via A Layman's Blog)

[maaarine]

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts (Oliver Burkeman, 2024)

"Just because certainty about the future is off the table, though, it doesn’t mean you can’t feel confident in your abilities to deal with the future when it does eventually arrive.

As the celebrated Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius reassures readers of his Meditations:

‘Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.’

You could say the worrier gets things exactly backwards.

He’s so terrified that he might not be able to rely on his inner resources, later on, when he reaches a bridge that needs crossing, that he makes superhuman efforts to bring the future under his control right now.

In fact he should devote less energy to manipulating the future, and have more faith in his capacity to handle things once the challenge actually arrives.

If it arrives, that is.

Marcus’s phrase ‘if you have to’ is a useful reminder that most of the bridges we worry about never end up needing to be crossed at all.

The fact that you can’t cross bridges before you come to them is liable to seem dispiriting, as if it leaves us with no option but to keep trudging vulnerably into the fog, trying not to think about sinkholes.

But it contains a hidden gift.

After all, if you’re hopelessly trapped in the present, it follows that your responsibility can only ever be to the very next moment – that your job is always simply to do what Carl Jung calls ‘the next and most necessary thing’ as best you can.

Now and then, to be sure, the next most necessary thing might be a little judicious planning for the future.

But you can do that, then let go of it, and move on; you needn’t try to live mentally ten steps ahead of yourself, straining to feel sure about what’s coming later."

[mercerislandbooks]

Our Favorite Nonfiction of 2024

It's very nearly the last minute, and, just in the nick of time, we have our list of favorite nonfiction from 2024. I will admit that this area is not my strong suit, so my coworkers are doing the heavy lifting. These are for the readers who want to more deeply understand the world around us, the history behind us, and the future to come. Brave readers all.

If you're looking for a behind the scenes peek at the giants of the American writing scene, pick up one of Brad's favorites, A Chance Meeting. Brad says, "American Luminaries... they're just like us! They hang out, have coffee together and get into arguments. In Rachel Cohen's wonderful new book, we eavesdrop on artists and writers from Henry James to James Baldwin and witness the impact these men and women had on each other."

As for the editing and publishing side, Caitlin loved The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America. "Judith Jones was the legendary editor at Knopf. She shaped the careers of Julia Child, Madhur Jaffrey, Anne Tyler and John Updike. Early in her career Jones saved The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank from the slush pile. What a life!"

Speaking of Julia Child, many of us love to cook (as well as read) at Island Books, and Laurie highly recommends Seriously, So Good by Carissa Stanton. She says anyone can cook from it and the food is delicious, which is exactly how I like my cookbooks!

Laurie also found Ina Garten's memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens "full of humor and dishy storytelling. The Barefoot Contessa entertains as she weaves the story of her childhood meeting Jeffrey and becoming THE Ina Garten. You'll enjoy this from start to finish!"

As for Cindy, her favorite nonfiction was Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. She says, "In Doppelganger, Canadian author, activist and cultural analyst Naomi Klein tours the persistence of The Doppelganger in history and literature while reckoning with her personal doppelganger, Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth turned conspiracy theorist ("Other Naomi"), with whom she is chronically confused or interchanged with by the public, mainly online. Part memoir, part social critique, Klein touches upon on issues of self-identity, self-presentation, online identity, the rapid dissemination of bad information, news, fake news, and the simmering entry of AI into our online constructs among many other factors that over the last few decades have contributed to the accelerated political polarization and societal disparity we are experiencing today."

Back to the realm of what we can control, from the author of Four Thousand Weeks, Victor highly recommends Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. "The perfect book for embracing and accepting your imperfections." Sounds like a good way to start out the new year!

Looking for a seafaring adventure to fill the void left by David Grann's The Wager? Brad says, look no further! "Hampton Sides brings Captain James Cook's final voyage to life in The Wide Wide Sea, while thoughtfully addressing the moral complexity of Cook's encounters with the indigenous populations of the Pacific Ocean."

If you'd like to explore a little closer to home, Nancy can't stop talking about Born of Fire and Rain. She says it's for the reader who is interested in the science and ecology of the Northwest. Plus it's beautifully written and illustrated. Come for the cover, stay for the words.

And for the micro-ecology of our own backyards, Backyard Bird Chronicles is perfect. Nancy says, "This is a great gift for anyone who likes to look out the window. Tan is showing us how to observe with no ulterior motive. Just the birds and beautiful drawings provide wonderful entertainment."

Caitlin loved There's Always This Year, saying it's "a book of fathers, sons, life, and, of course, basketball." And she picked Bluff, by Danez Smith, as a standout poetry collection from this year. She says she often read through individual poems multiple times, and calls it a "deeply thought-provoking look at civil action."

My own contribution is How to Winter, which I enjoyed so much that I wrote a whole blog about it. It's perfect for this time of year, but has tools that can help us shift our mindsets during any challenging times.

I hope one of these catches your eye, either for you, or for the nonfiction reader in your life! This link will take you to the book list on our website:

2024: Our Favorite Nonfiction

Happy perusing!

-- Lori

[nikihawkes]

Book Review: Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkman

Title: Meditations for Mortals Author: Oliver Burkman Series: N/A Genre: Non-Fiction Rating: 5/5 stars! The Overview: Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life – one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves. Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a…

[theadmiringbog]

Her teaching style was not to lighten the burden of the student, but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down.

--

Our suffering is believing there's a way out

Mel Weitsman, Zen teacher

--

When you grasp the sense in which your situation is worse than you thought, you no longer have to go through life adopting the brace position, desperately hoping someone will find a way to prevent he plan from crashing. You understand that the plan has already crashed. (It crashed, for you, the moment you were born.) You're already stranded on the deser island with nothing but old airplane food to subsist on and no option but to make the best of life with your fellow survivors.

--

Here you are. Here we all are. Now ... what might be some good things to do with your time?

--

How to spend more time doing the things that matter to you?

You just do them. You pick something you genuinely care about and then, for at least a few minmutes, you do some of it. Today.

--

Don't get distracted wondering what might be the best thing to do: that's superyacht thinking, borne of the desire to feel certain you're ont he right path.

--

Unless you're literally being physically coerced into doing something, the notion that you have to do it in truth means that you've chosen not to pay the price of refusing; just as teh notion that you absolutely can't do something generally means you're unwilling to pay the price of doing it.

--

It's a particular peril among the progressive-minded to take the fact that a given choice might be unfeasible for the underprivileged as a reason not to make it yourself. But unless it's you who's underprivileged, that's an alibi, not an argument.

--

It was a central insight of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre that there's a secret comfort in telling yourself you've got no options because it's easier to wallow in the "bad faith" of believing yourself trapped than to face the dizzying responsibilities of your freedom.

--

At other times you'll go ahead and do the undesired thing anyway because you understand the cost and you don't want to incur it. Notice how different that is -- how different if feels - from grudgingly saying yes because you "feel you have no choice,' then resenting it for days.

--

The challenge isn't to locate a few needles of relevance in a haystack of dross. The challenge according to Nicholas Carr is figuring out to deal, day in and day out, with "haystack-sized piles of needles."

--

Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket.

Think of your backlog not as a container that gradually fills up and that it's your job to empty but as a sream that flows past you from which you get to pick a few choice items, here and there, without feeling guilty for letting all the others float by.

--

Most of the long-term benefits of reading arise not from teh facts you insert into your brain but from the ways in which reading changes you, by shaping your sensibility, from which good work and good ideas will later flow.

--

David Cain:

Imagine if all the available public concern for a given issue could be collected in a huge rain barrel and redistributed among fewer people. Instead of having 50 miullion people care seriously about an issue for all of six hours, you could still that 300 million hours of public concern into, say, 3,000 people who made it a primary moral concern for a decade. We can't reallocate public concern like rainbarral water but maybe each of us, within ourselves, can become a little more focusecd. Imagine if it was normal for each person to focus ten times as deeply on one or two issues at a time, rather than taking on the motional burden of dozens and feeling helpless about teh state of the world.

--

Perfectionists love to begin new endeavors because the moment of starting belongs to the world of limitlessness: for as long as you haven't done any work on a project, it's still possible to believe that the end result might match the ideal in your mind.

--

Jude King, writer:

Every worthwhile goal is supposed to feel hard, unglamorous, unsexy

at least for some of the time that you're actually putting in the work.

--

When you find yourself torn between options or external pressures and your own ambitions or unable, for any other reason, to figure out what to next, ask yourself: What's the life task here? Never mind what you want. What does life want?

--

To enquire what your life task might be, at any particular instant, is to switch your perspective in a manner that makes it possible to think new thoughts.

-

Beyond the mountains, more mountains.

~ Haitian proverb

--

Instead of asking how to summon the energy or motivation or self-discipline to do something that matters to you, it's often more helpful to ask: What if this might be a lot easier than I'd been assuming?

[ironladders]

she misses him 😔

[adairtrashart]

cotltober day 11 poison

shamuras crown helps them be more stable and have better memory retention chemachs crown is the source of her insanity

but at the end of the day all crownbearers have to deal with the consequences of wielding this power eventually as it slowly changes them like rot and decay to a discarded carcass

dont know what else to put here

[idontmindifuforgetme]

Just a girl who wants to be her mother’s daughter in the ways that matter

[moguberri]

mortal kombat therapist au and its shang tsung flirting with liu kang while liu kang tries to find out what the fuck is wrong with him

[grellsaw]

⸻ ❝ Grim Reapers must remain neutral between God and humans. they are strictly forbidden from intervening in or influencing human affairs. Their principal job is to check each dying soul's Cinematic Record, or kaleidoscope of memories, one by one, to determine whether they deserve to die. ❞

↳ #𝑮𝑹𝑬𝑳𝑳𝑺𝑨𝑾 is portraying &. writing as 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐒𝐔𝐓𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐅 from the KUROSHITSUJI ( black butler ) franchise. penned by malikai. this character self-identifies as a woman. any transphobia against said character will result in instantaneous block. this blog is 21+ and not spoiler free.

navigation links ~ ! ⸻ * about . * ask memes . * carrd . * promo . * headcanons . * dragon age . credit ~ ! ⸻ * icons .

⸻ ❝ 𝑻𝑯𝑶𝑺𝑬 𝑳𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑬𝑫 𝑵𝑶𝑻 𝑻𝑶 𝑫𝑰𝑬 .

@akumanomorii . // . @acollapsar . // . @gwg0ry . // . @crownshattered . // . @sebaelis . // . @aurea-oculos . // . @swrdmaid

⸻ ❝ 𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 &. 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄 .

𝐈 . as aforementioned, any transphobia will result in a block. this includes racism, homophobia, antisemitism, and any sort of other discrimination against minorities. be a generally courteous person, not an ignorant loudly proclaiming prejudice.

𝐈𝐈 . activity is sparse. real life comes first. with that in mind, be aware my silence is due from external means. tumblr writing is not my obligation, it is a side project and/or hobby.

adding onto this, i tend to reply slowly to both IC and OOC interactions. my real life outranks writing in my priority scale. please do not push me for replies, it worsens my anxiety &. it will lead to socially distancing from said individual. nothing against the person, it is an innate bad habit.

𝐈𝐈𝐈 . i openly ship. if i have an idea for romantic chemistry, i may reference it. however, i will not push it upon another, nor would i appreciate others pushing their characters onto me.

𝐈𝐕 . no, you are not spamming my inbox. always send prompts or memes. i wholeheartedly welcome it. so long as there is no anonymous hate sent, my inbox is open to all.

𝐕 . i am an adult. i presume most of my followers are. please act your age; any drama, vague-posting, harassment will result in an instantaneous block. this isn't twitter, you're not a vigilante seeking justice. resolve your issues privately.

i do not like to block people. however, when it concerns perpetuating drama on the dashboard, inciting harassment toward other writers, i disavow. i will hard-block you. regardless of what contents it has, i do not want the additional stress in my life. if you intend to reblog callouts, please tag them appropriately with "cw drama" or "drama".

𝐕𝐈 . if you intend to block me out of the blue, please inform me why out of sheer courtesy. this is not an enforced policy, it is more-so my wanting to understand why. i will not be offended if you choose not to.

𝐕𝐈𝐈 . Normally I do not mind, but if you refer to me as your “friend” after having only 3 separate conversations and nothing personal entailing them, then we are not friends, we are acquaintances. furthermore, if you begin to "love bomb" ( read the definition here ) me on our first interaction, i will be wary of your intentions. i do not assume said person harbors malicious intent, it comes from previous experiences wherein love-bombing resulted in built-up resentment from unresolved conflicts not imparted on both sides.

TO CLARIFY: that does not mean i am unreceptive to establishing friendships, this is entirely false. there is a lot of nuance when it comes to online interactions &. setting social boundaries. i welcome people to directly message me on here or on tumblr ! this guideline simply exists solely to help un-blur the line between what constitutes a friend from an acquaintance. a friend knows who you are outside the screen; there is consistent, constant interaction off tumblr. whereas an acquaintance is when both parties have tangible interactions, only knowing each other at surface-level.

[maaarine]

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts (Oliver Burkeman, 2024)

"Consequences aren’t optional.

It’s in the nature of being finite that every choice comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant, you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others.

Spending a week’s holiday in Rome means not spending that same week in Paris; avoiding a conflict in the short term means dealing with whatever might result from letting a bad situation fester.

Freedom isn’t a matter of somehow wriggling free of the costs of your choice – that’s never an option – but of realizing, as Kopp points out, that nothing stops you doing anything at all, so long as you’re willing to pay those costs.

Unless you’re literally being physically coerced into doing something, the notion that you ‘have to do it’ in truth means that you’ve chosen not to pay the price of refusing; just as the notion that you absolutely can’t do something generally means you’re unwilling to pay the price of doing it.

You could quit your job with no backup plan. You could book a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro, or rob a bank, or tell your social media followers your honest views.

The conservative American economist Thomas Sowell summed things up with a bleakness I appreciate, insisting that there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

The only two questions, at any moment of choice in life, is what the price is, and whether or not it’s worth paying.

This can come as a revelation and a liberation to the anxious among us – partly because it cuts genuinely agonizing choices down to a more manageable number, but also because it reminds us that most of the potential consequences we find ourselves agonizing about don’t remotely justify such angst."

[clouds-of-wings]

From The Book of the Courtier by Count Baldesar Castiglione (1528), translated by Leonard Opdycke

[auncyen]

til there is an app to remind you memento mori at 5 random times a day.

[rope-dart-shots]

This is a lead elbow wrap and shot. For me, it's important to feel the dart penetrate an object. Not because I'm trying to be violent at all, but because I can move the energy more efficiently and honestly in the way it was intended. I approach Rope Dart in the way folks approach archery. Meditative target practice. The nice thing is I don't have to reload! It's beautiful, circular, relaxed power.

[gabrielisdead]

aren't you never getting bored of the pretty, aren't you yearning for ugliness in perfection, what makes us beautiful if we can never bleed

[livehorses]

Just a friendly reminder, that Easter preparation is different from Christmas'.

While the Advent, the preparation for Christmas, is similar to the joy of expecting the birth of a child, which is what we celebrate, Lent has a more sober feeling, because it's based on the forty days Jesus spent doing fasting and prayer in the desert. We also remember His painful Passion on Holy Week, and then His death.

So, maybe we should leave the festive greetings and cheerful decorations for the Easter Sunday, instead of anticipating it...