Food For Thought (9/5/21)

Hi Friends,

Summer is slowly coming to an end, kids are starting school again and time just seems to go by so fast. I hope you are taking some time to yourself today, taking a deep breath and enjoying this present moment. 

Below are a few resources I came across this past month that inspired me to pause and look at the world in slightly a new way. I hope you enjoy them all.

Articles:

Hard-Working and Conscientious? Watch Out for the Dark Side - You’re diligent, industrious, painstaking, dedicated, careful, thorough, hard-working, and particular. Wow, that's really impressive. Clearly, conscientiousness is a great personality trait. Or is it?

Book recommendation:

Letters from a Father to His Daughter - When Indira Gandhi was a little girl of ten, she spent the summer in Mussoorie, while her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was in Allahabad. Over the summer, Nehru wrote her a series of letters in which he told her the story of how and when the earth was made, how human and animal life began, and how civilizations and societies evolved all over the world.

Written in 1928, these letters remain fresh and vibrant, and capture Nehru's love for people and for nature, whose story was for him 'more interesting than any other story or novel that you may have read.

Worth pondering:

To imagine is really the first step in creating anything. Therefore an essential chore for making a future we want to live in, is to imagine what it is like and how we get there. That plausible path is a form of optimism. Believing it is possible makes it more likely to happen. When hurdles and setbacks arise -- and they will -- the belief in its possibility serves as motivation. History is filled with accounts of people who held an optimistic belief others thought unlikely, or even impossible. This optimistic previsualization is a necessary component of change. Since we can not be certain of the future, optimism is only a belief -- a stance that could be incorrect. On the surface, an optimistic belief might seem no more valid than the stance of pessimism. But the deep history of new ideas makes it very clear that the optimistic stance of believing something is possible is a requirement to make anything new real, and is thus more powerful than pessimism. In the long run, optimists shape the future.

— An interview with Kevin Kelly

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we don’t know what’s really going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don’t know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.

— Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Worth watching:

Breath -- five minutes can change your life | Stacey Schuerman | TEDxChapmanU - This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Stacey Schuerman leads us through an exercise designed to reset, renew, and rejuvenate our energy.  Join her as she teaches us about breathing and calming the mind.

Picture highlighted:

Nima (my hubby) took this photo a few days ago. We’ve been spending time in Chicago again. Where I grew up. Chicago has a few perfect, and I mean PERFECT summer nights a year, and this was one of them. Nights that make you fall in love with the city, soaking the good mood, the amazing air, and all its energy. 

Until next time,

Dena 👋🏽

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