Words I Needed Last Week 4/3
"Understand me...I do not have time for things that have no soul."
Words I saved, read, wrote down, and savored last week. From choosing uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment, to letting things lightly happen, to our cosmic insignificance, to Nikki Finney’s razor-sharp sentences, to Bukowski’s brief yet perfect explanation of exactly how I’ve been feeling lately.
Happy Monday, friends.
—Nneka
“Ask yourself of every dilemma, every choice, every relationship, every commitment, or every failure to commit does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?”
"Fear of our own depth is the enemy"
—James Hollis
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”
―Aldous Huxley, “Island”
These words from Aldous Huxley make me exhale every single time.
“Every ocean is a drop in the universe. The whole of present time is a pin-prick of eternity.”
—Marcus Aurelius
“Not a girl any longer, she is capable of her own knife-work now. She understands sharpness & duty. She knows what a blade can reveal & destroy. She has come to use life’s points and edges to uncover life’s treasures. She would rather be the one deciding what she keeps and what she throws away.”
—Nikki Finney, “Head Off & Split”
I teach students — this comes from the journalist Catherine Price — the acronym W.W.W.: what for, why now and what else? When you pick up your phone, what was that for? Was there a purpose? Then: Why now? Did you have something to do, or were you bored or anxious or fighting some craving? And then, what else?: actively noticing the opportunity cost. It could be studying. It could be talking to your roommate. Based on seeing students in the trenches, the biggest hit of social media on their well-being is that they spend a lot of time on it thinking that they’re being social rather than talking to other people. I do that too. There are times when my husband walks into the room and we could have a nice conversation about how our day is and I’m looking at some crap on Reddit. It’s like, I have a husband who’s here. I could talk to him! We’re not always making good use of the humans around us.
—Laurie Santos, “Why Her Yale Students Have so Much Anxiety.”
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.
—James Baldwin
"Understand me...I do not have time for things that have no soul."
—Charles Bukowski
Every person in his first trip to a foreign country, where he knows neither the people nor the language, experiences childhood.
—Shulamith Firestone
I think this notion spans far beyond travel and bleeds into all of life's little novelties.
Thank you! Words i needed <3
Thank you. I breathed a little lighter too💜💜