Lifelong Virgins
The Futility Closet notes, Lifelong virgins: Hans Christian Andersen, author J.M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan Lewis Carroll, author and logician Emily Dickinson, poet Immanuel Kant Søren Kierkegaard Nikola Tesla, inventor Ed Gein, serial killer Mark Twain kept his virginity until age 34; Goethe until 39. Voltaire wrote, “It is one of the superstitions of […]
Purchase Justification and Product Neglect
Cheryl Winokur Munk argues in The Wall Street Journal that, when a new model of a smartphone is mainly about how the product looks, we’re more likely to be careless than when a model offers technological improvements: When new models of a phone are released, consumers are likely to become more careless with their current […]
Kevin Kelly’s Unsolicited Advice
Kevin Kelly, the founder of WIRED magazine, offered 68 lessons on life upon turning 68 Learn how to learn from those you disagree with or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe. Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love, keep asking […]
Three Marks of Existence
Author and teacher Lewis Richmond writes in The Authentic Life (2012): Sometimes when I’m asked to describe the Buddhist teachings, I say this: Everything is connected; nothing lasts; you are not alone. This is really just a restatement of the traditional Three Marks of Existence: non-self, impermanence, and suffering.
Zen: The Religion Before Religion
American novelist and novelist Peter Matthiessen writes in Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals, 1969-1982: Zen has been called the “religion before religion,” which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And that phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven and a splendorous earth were one. […]
Dealing with the Divisions in Our Society
John W. Gardner writes in Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961,) No society can successfully resolve its internal conflicts if its only asset is cleverness in the management of these conflicts. It must also have compelling goals that are shared by the conflicting parties; and it must have a sense of movement […]
Those “Uncivilized” People Are Superior
Sereno Sky writes in Lonely Traveller (2014,) These tribes living away from civilization, whom western society calls “primitive” and “uncivilized,” these people are actually very rich: They have food from mother earth, they have no government screwing them, they help one another, they find healing in plants and herbs, with no poverty, no racism, no […]
Right Person in the Right Job at the Right Time
From Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher’s The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise (,) It’s not just about finding people with the right and best skills for the amount you are willing to pay. It’s about ensuring that you have the right person in the right […]
Being, stopping, not creating
Melvin McLeod writes in his introduction to The Best Buddhist Writing 2010, Buddhist meditation is about stopping, not creating. It’s not about changing who we are – the trying to do that is actually the root of our problem – it’s about being who we are, simply and directly.
People Who are Not Going to Love You
On June 16, 1991, civic leader and former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services John W. Gardner gave a commencement address to the Stanford Alumni Association 61 years after he graduated from that college: You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. […]