Portals

But don't underrate the value of being healthy. Things did not end well for Virginia.

"Virginia Woolf on being ill as a portal to self-understanding and a way of breaking through our ordinary waking-state perception" https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/05/06/virginia-woolf-on-being-ill/

https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C2GY6ohxDni/

Simone de Beauvoir on the Art of Growing Older – The Marginalian

Today, and for the next few weeks, my wife is chronologically older than me. She might need to hear what Maria  Popova and Simone de Beauvoir say about time's arrow… (And happy birthday to WJ, 182 today.)

…to grow old at all is a tremendous privilege — one withheld from the vast majority of humans populating the history of our young species (to say nothing of the infinite potential humans who never chanced into existing).

"…There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work… In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion." Simone de Beauvoir 

Complement with Bertrand Russell on how to grow old and Thoreau on the greatest gift of the winter years, then revisit Simone de Beauvoir on the ultimate frontier of hope and the artist's task to liberate the present from the past.  https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/31/simone-de-beauvoir-coming-of-age/

https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/31/simone-de-beauvoir-coming-of-age/

Stephen Hawking happy

When asked about living with [ALS, Lou Gehrig's ] disease, he told an interviewer that he was "happier now" than before he became ill. "Before, I was very bored with life. I drank a fair bit, I guess; I didn't do any work . . .When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have."

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-monday-january-645?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post