Thoughts of a curious soul
My mind is restless. It wants to orbit around human nature, look at it from every possible angle. I read and read, learn and lose myself into the thoughts of others, relentlessly, adding pixels to a picture that never ceases to grow. I feast on new insight, I shake and questions burst out whenever new…
Who am I? Was my newborn self the closest I ever was to being me? Or am I a result, a countless addition of experiences? Do these very questions and analyzing self-doubts come from a genuine place? Such questions I keep asking myself, and I found some clearance in Susan Cain’s research on introversion for…
At some point, my interest in understanding myself had to scratch the surface of psychology and look more closely at what introversion really means. I was pointed to Quiet, by Susain Cain, as a good place to start. What follows are some of my takeaways from her comprehensive research on the topic. 1. Being an…
As a follow up to my reflections on Being a Writer – which were also inspired by Dani Shapiro’s outstanding book Still Writing – I wanted to recollect some of her advice on writing as a daily practice. It resulted in the following discussion, which I am sure can be of use to those who…
What is being a writer? Did some of us see a point in painting on rocks and carving hieroglyphs on walls? Are some individuals inclined to leave traces, unknowingly perpetuating an old tradition, as if a universal pledge was running through their veins? I don’t have answers to these fascinating questions. What I can do…
The Obstacle is the Way is Ryan Holiday’s revision of ancient Stoic guidelines on our human perception of obstacles. It is filled with potent teachings and well worth the read, though too centered around masculine values and role models for my taste. Still, if you are feeling stuck, you’ll find wisdom to reflect upon in…
Lifelong Learning is an expression that keeps coming up in the books and blogs I read. My linguistic (and somewhat weird) thinking process likes how both of these words sound when paired together. The fact that they both start with an “L”, end with “ng”, and are comprised of 8 letters each make them look…
Echoing Paul Graham’s wise words on “How to do what you love” and my own reflections on that subject, Robert Greene delves into the subject of our primal inclinations in his book Mastery. By that expression, he means what we were naturally attracted to from the earliest stages of our childhood. I shall get somewhat…
When I see the awe in my one-year-old nephew’s eyes when he looks outside the window, I’m reminded of how we all, at one point or another in our lives, were marveling at the world. We were naturally inclined to experience the world as a playground, with a sense of boundless curiosity. Before anything was…
This article is the fruit of reflections that grew in my mind after reading “Mastery”, by Robert Greene. The book is an in-depth description of a state we get to experience amidst our intense immersion in a task, most often after years of dedication: the state of mastery. It is a state you’ve probably experienced…
