Your Time
One of the top things elderly Americans regret in life is being too busy to have had the time to do the things they actually enjoyed. Older Americans overwhelmingly wish they had worked and [sic] less and spent more time with family, going for a walk, sleeping in, and just enjoying life. Few people my age will take this advice seriously.
The field of positive psychology teaches us that having control over your time is one of the biggest keys to being happy. People adjust to material stuff quickly. But losing control of your time makes almost everyone miserable. No matter how much you love work, everyone should do everything they can to gain control over their time.
Having Control Over Your Time Is the Only Sensible Financial Goal by Morgan Housel
__________
Find Your Way Home
I once heard a speech by writer Elizabeth Gilbert about how the best way to respond to success or failure was the same, “You have got to find your way back home again,” she explained. “If you’re wondering what your home is, here’s a hint: Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. Your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.”
Trail Runner Magazine article about Tommy Rivers Puzey
This quote was from a Trail Runner Magazine article about Tommy Rivers Puzey, a long distance runner. It’s an inspiring story about his battle with cancer.
His return to the NY Marathon was written up in the NY Times.
__________
Tree Stand
Although it looks like a woodland of individual trees with striking white bark and small leaves that flutter in the slightest breeze, Pando (Latin for “I spread”) is actually 47,000 genetically identical stems that arise from an interconnected root network. This single genetic individual weighs around 6,000 metric tons. By mass, it is the largest single organism on Earth.
Aspen trees do tend to form clonal stands elsewhere, but what makes Pando interesting is its enormous size. Most clonal aspen stands in North America are much smaller, with those in the western U.S. averaging just 3 acres.
Pando has been around for thousands of years, potentially up to 14,000 years, despite most stems only living for about 130 years.
…It has dealt with disease, wildfire, and grazing before, and remains the world’s largest scientifically documented organism.
via Atlas Obscura
_________
Beauty in Motion
In his 2006 essay, ‘Roger Federer as Religious Experience’, the late, great American writer David Foster Wallace wrote that “beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty”.
“It might be called kinetic beauty,” he added. “Its power and appeal are universal.”
Watch Kipchoge run, and you’ll see his point. It’s difficult to find a sportsperson so impossibly suited to his craft, as if his entire reason for being is to coast over the ground at 4:40 per mile, a pace that for most would feel like a sprint.
But when Kipchoge does it, his head has virtually no vertical motion, his face so relaxed that he looks bored. His arms hang loose, swinging casually, his fingers in a gentle tuck, as if holding an invisible stick. His feet don’t so much hit the ground as stroke it, his toes pushing off the road with the elegant, balletic grace of a dancer.
via Irish Examiner , H/T The Collaborative Fund
__________
Links
If you’re interested in NFTs:
A model for trading and sharing art, built on the principles of financial transparency, royalties and easy access for all may sound egalitarian. The reality has been rather different. As soon as it became apparent that almost anything digital could be labelled as art and sold, the circus rolled into town.
The Guardian
If you’re a baseball fan.
If you know (or don’t know) who Paul Finebaum is (RE: Knowledge Bubbles).
If you’re wondering why Amazon delivery vans make a funny noise when they back up.
If you’re thinking about working multiple jobs simultaneously.
If you like to snow ski (or you just want to be entertained)