1. Finding Myself in the Garden on Lion’s Roar. “Valerie Brown returns to gardening to recover her broken spirit, and discovers what really grows in a garden is love.”
2. Wisdom from Alice O’Keeffe: “Even if we can’t escape its consequences, it is not too late to escape the mindset that brought us here.”
3. 25 Reasons Why You Should Write a Book (PDF) from Alexandra Franzen, written in support of her Tiny Book Course.
4. Wisdom from George Saunders by way of J Clement Wall’s most recent newsletter Something about kindness: “I recently heard author George Saunders in an interview talking about how to be a kind human in a cruel world. Saunders said that kindness is the only non-delusional response to the human condition. He said that we’re all in our own little flawed thinking machines, and when we see someone else in their flawed thinking machine, it seems crazy to start judging that person. ‘You might more reasonably say, ‘oh wow, you too.'”
5. How to Help Afganistan’s People Amid Taliban Control. In related news, How to Help Haiti Right Now.
6. 3 Reminders If You Don’t Have It All Figured Out by Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.
7. How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked, one of my favorite teachings from one of my favorite teachers on Lion’s Roar. “Pema Chödrön on shenpa, or the urge, the hook, that triggers our habitual tendency to close down. We get hooked in that moment of tightening when we reach for relief. To get unhooked, we begin by recognizing that moment of unease and learn to relax in that moment.”
8. A sacrifice and a risk from Austin Kleon. Because this: “The sacrifice is that doing The Thing requires not doing everything else we might like to do, at least when we’re actually making The Thing…The risk is that The Thing just might not work — in Buber’s words, it will break, or it will break us.
9. Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID Vaccine Gets Full Approval From The FDA. In related news, Moderna Is About to Begin Trials for HIV Vaccine Based on COVID-19 Research.
10. Dr Natasha Larmie (@fatdoctoruk) on Instagram. A weight inclusive GP who has some important things to say about “diet talk, mental health, ED, medical abuse.”
11. Wisdom from Sharon Salzberg:
“When our efforts to help seem futile, we can trust that in another time and place there may be unexpected results. When we’re trying to address a problem, improve the state of the world, help a struggling friend, comfort a grieving child, it might all appear to be going nowhere.
Yet our actions are like planting seeds in the ground. We don’t know for sure when they will bear fruit, and what looks like failure may be a time of gestation. Our work toward the good can be sustained if we don’t harshly measure the success or failure of our actions by the immediate, and superficially apparent, results.
12. How Julia Alvarez Wrote Her Many Selves Into Existence.
13. How Ross Gay Finds Joy In The Smallest of ‘Delights’.
14. My Secret Weapon Against the Attention Economy. “When you reread the same poem over and over again, you stop scrolling along the surface and dive deep beneath it.”
15. Work Is a False Idol on The New York Times. “Work has become intolerable. Rest is resistance.”
16. On Being with Krista Tippett: Christine Runyan / What’s Happening in Our Nervous Systems? “Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isolation — what’s happened at the level of stress response and nervous system, the literal mind-body connection. And she offers simple strategies to regain our fullest capacities for the world ahead.”
17. 5 Things You Can Do as an Introvert When You’re Feeling Lonely.
18. Wisdom from the Dalai Lama: “Please don’t think that compassion, love and tolerance only belong to religion. They belong to human life. From compassion we develop self-confidence; that brings inner strength, allowing us to act with transparency and candour. We can make this a peaceful century if we conduct ourselves in this way, if we cherish non-violence and concern for others’ well-being.”
20. Recipes I want to try: The Ultimate Fry Sauce and Slow-Roasted Tomatoes.
21. Hilary Mantel on How Writers Learn to Trust Themselves.
22. The Coronavirus Is Here Forever. This Is How We Live With It.
23. The Best of Tiny Love Stories on The New York Times. “These true stories, each no more than 100 words, pack a punch. We gathered 10 of the most powerful to give you a boost.”
24. An Anarchist Quaker’s Prayer to Soothe Anxiety. “What my therapist said when she closed her office because of coronavirus.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 