Timeless Ideas | July 18, 2021
Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.
Quotes
I.
You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.
― Robert M. Pirsig
II.
The true purpose [of Zen] is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes... Zen practice is to open up our small mind.
― Shunryu Suzuki
III.
If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.
― Lao Tzu
Ideas
I.
Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid?
Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
II.
Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
Hermann Hesse in Siddhartha
III.
Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.
Viktor E. Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning
Articles Worth Reading
I.
Anna North | Vox
The five-day workweek is so entrenched in American life that everything, from vacation packages to wedding prices to novelty signs, is built around it. When you live it every Monday through Friday, year in and year out, it can be hard to imagine any other way. But there’s nothing inevitable about working eight hours a day, five days a week (or more).
II.
The Problem We’re Now Facing With WFH
Henry Grabar | Slate
All of this talk about going back to the office is so disingenuous in some ways, because, yes we have roads and bridges and public transportation, but we don’t have the care infrastructure that would enable everybody who can and wants to come back to work. And that’s not just for the office workers. Work may not change dramatically in the next six months to a year, but it’s going to in the next 10 to 20 years. And so why not begin having these larger, harder conversations right now?
III.
Why You’re So Anxious About Going Back to the Office
Alice Boyes | Harvard Business Review
If you’re feeling social anxiety about returning to the office, you’re not alone. Many folks are feeling unsettled. After over a year of remote work — and seeing our coworkers only on screen — the idea of seeing everyone again in person can feel overwhelming. And, since the Covid landscape is still in flux, it’s hard to feel sure about how long the “return to normal” will last.
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