Get Yourself A Fabric Store That Will Light Your Fabric On Fire For You

How can I find it in myself to care about the small joys when there's so many atrocities happening in the world?

There is space for both. Feeling joy does not take away from mindfulness of greater issues. In fact, it is critical to engage with the lighter side of things, otherwise you'll lose touch with what you're fighting for. You'll burn out. The world will not be saved by how much collective mindspace we give to atrocities. It will be saved by how many of us can get up and fight another day.

I know it's not easy to convince your brain of this, the things you think about aren't so easily controlled. But if giving space to the bad is preventing you from enjoying the good, it might be a good idea to step back a bit. Do something with your hands, talk to a friend, try something new. Disengage with worry as best as you can, and give yourself permission to do so. It is not a guilty pleasure; you are not harming anyone by taking a breather. And there are plenty of us filling in while you rest.

A brief moment of rationality from the bird place.

“be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods.” the best advice I’ve ever received.

For all my fellow oversharers out there.

I’m at a sociology conference and just attended a memorial for one of the giants of our field, and one of the panelists told this story…he was at a meeting with this guy, who he got his PhD under and had a long standing relationship with, and he was bemoaning the current state of the world, and he asked this old professor, “how can you be so optimistic? I can’t ever be anything but a pessimist.”

and the old professor said, “you little fucker, I’m going to make a statement and then I’m going to take you out to the parking lot and beat your ass. What good does your pessimism do?”

and that really struck me. not the least because I also knew this old professor and he very rarely swore, so I know this was something he was really worked up about. what good does your pessimism do? What GOOD does your pessimism DO. I’ll be thinking about that for awhile.

Yes. Have YOU considered that sometimes working on hard things is both necessary and worthwhile?

Idk how many people know about this but Harvard offers a bunch of free courses every semester & they are genuinely so cool & such a good resource!

Identity is a prison! Let yourself respond authentically to each moment as it arrives, without being bound to the narrative of who you think you are! The self is a construct! The truth of your existence is ever changing and infinite as the universe is ever changing and infinite! Abandon the stories of your past selves and be present and alive in this very moment! IDENTITY IS DEAD! THE SELF IS DEAD! YOU ARE ALIVE!

it's ambedkar jayanti and here's a reminder that the annihilation of caste is available freely in most places on the internet including archive.org (you can do text-to-speech if you prefer listening) and youtube (as an audiobook in hindi, english, tamil, and other languages). pdfs and epub versions are available on library genesis. if you live in a western country im sure your local library has it too. so you really have no excuse for not having read it especially if you're an indian/person of indian ancestry.

I think the best advice I ever got to stop myself from getting in my head over issues i was having with a partner/friend was “Are you deciding on ultimatums in your relationship without the other persons knowledge or consent? Are you having conversations in your head where the other party is a projection you supply the responses for? If so; you have done this person a huge disservice in not allowing them to answer on their own terms. You have done so much architecture around this problem in your mind that is impenetrable for anyone who was not there when it was being built.”

That shit really changed my life and honestly? I think made me a nicer person to be around.