The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness.
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them.
They move on. They move away.
The moments that used to define them are covered by
moments of their own accomplishments.
It is not until much later, that
children understand;
their stories and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories
of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones,
beneath the water of their lives
The Marquis De Sade said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit;
that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage.
people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul,
never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast,
or to understand that sex, pain and love are all extreme experiences.
Only those who know those frontiers know life;
everything else is just passing the time,
repeating the same tasks,
growing old and dying
without ever having discovered what we are doing here
Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance,
but simply because they no longer lead somewhere
And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow.
Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow.
You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task
In metric,
one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter,
weighs one gram,
and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade
—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point.
An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it.
No one tells you these rules, but you break them at your peril.
Rules, written and unwritten, help keep the trains on the tracks.
Without them, things would devolve into chaos.
But following all those rules can be stifling.
There's no room to be yourself, to chart your own path.
Sometimes you have to break the rules and go with your gut.
I promise it'll only hurt a little.
Medical textbooks from the Middle Ages contained a chart called "The Sphere of Life and Death."
Doctors used it to predict health outcomes based only on a patient's name.
The sphere was based on numerology, the Zodiac, the moon and starts.
It's pseudo-science compared to modern metrics. But humans have always craved certainty.
Diagnosis, prognosis, genetic predisposition. They're all ways of placing ourselves on the sphere.
We ask science to protect us from the simplest fact of life: it's full of surprises.
We trust science to predict the future.
But even so, surprises are the only thing we can count on.
Sometimes surprises are good. They lift you up and make life exquisite.
But then there's the other kind of surprise, when the bottom drops out.
However desperate you might be, don't look to the stars.
Because they can't help you now.
I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see...
they're all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down....
There's no conclusive science.
My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting....
I find it more comforting to believe that this isn't simply a test
Your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations.
You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay.
People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been just another word for darkness.
Blind encounters writing sonnets no one can ever read.
Desire and pain communicated in the vague language of sex.
None of which made sense to me until much later when I realized everything I thought I'd retained of my encounters added up to so very little, hardly enduring, just shadows of love outlining nothing at all.
Scientists have published studies about how the practice of gratitude improves mental and physical health.
A daily gratitude practice reduces depression and increases happiness. Gratitude enhances empathy, which helps build positive relationships. It even lowers blood pressure.
If giving thanks is so good for you, why do so many people struggle doing it? Why do we only designate one day a year to give thanks?
After everything we've been through, why not celebrate the good every day? Hug your loved ones. Smile at a stranger. Choose kindness.
What's the worst that could happen?
Someone might do it in return.
Every life on the planet begins as a single cell, which splits and multiplies over and over again.
Each cell has a purpose and as it forms, internal and external forces converge on it, signalling to the cell what it will become.
We call this process differentiation.
An arm, a bone, a brain: all cells take a journey from generalized to specialized. They go from nothing to something, or what you could be to what you are.
At a cellular level, we are made of forks in the road. A generalized cell is born and it splits and splits, not having much choice in the matter. Eventually, it's a body. Eventually, it's you, out in the world.
So maybe you are who you are. Maybe you can't choose who you love or what you want any more than a cell can choose to be a liver, a lung, a heart.
But cells only take you so far.
In the end, you create yourself and your life is the life you've made.
But no one said it would be easy.
Our DNA is made up out of four nucleotide bases.
The sequences of these bases is what determines our unique genetic code.
Everything, from dimples to eye color to tolerance for spicy food, can be found in our genes.
Genetic makeup can also help ascertain risk for diseases. So, it stands to reason, if we want to minimize the risk, could we find a way to change our genes? And if we could, are we sure we should?
Segments of our DNA strands can be turned on or off by our behaviours and environment.
So why not change the expression of our DNA and make it our own?
Because who we are isn't determined just by what we inherit but by what we choose to do with it.
When there's a poisonous snake in our path, we freeze.
When we smell smoke, we run.
When faced with danger, fear takes over and we react, desperate to feel safe. It's biological, primal.
But for someone who suffers from trauma, it's the everyday things. A song in a coffee shop, the smell of rubbing alcohol, seemingly random, common things, convincing your brain and body you're in danger. And there is no way out.
Too often, trauma gets dismissed as just in our head. But the pain is real. We feel it, in our muscles, our cells, our hearts, our heads.
And while there's no magic fix, no pill to make it disappear, we can ask for help.
And we can tell our truth, whenever we're ready.
I drink so I can talk to assholes.
This includes me.
Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality—that's-all—I was curious...
I always preferred to be hated.
Like Eric von Stroheim in the movies, the man you love to hate, it's meant to be ironic, courage wants to laugh.
You know it's a stupid situation.
always a piece or two left over,
. So what do you do with that piece?
Do you try to fit it back in? Do you try to make it work? Or do you decide you can live without that missing piece?
When we go without certain things long enough, it's easy to forget just how much we need them. We forget what we had once. We forget what it's like to live with a thing, not that we need, but that we want.
That's why it's so important for us to remind ourselves, for us to remember, just because we can live without something, it doesn't mean we have to.
There are distinct differences between male and female brains.
Female brains have a larger hippocampus which usually makes them better at retention and memory.
Male brains have a bigger parietal cortex which helps when fending off an attack.
Male brains confront challenges differently than female brains.
Women are hardwired to communicate with language, detail, empathy.
Men... not so much.
It doesn't mean that we're any less capable of emotion. We can talk about our feelings. It's just that most of the time we'd really rather not.
Be a man. People say it all the time. But what does that even mean?
Is it about strength? Is it about sacrifice? Is it about winning?
Maybe it's simpler than that.
You have to know when not to man up.
Sometimes it takes a real man to set his ego aside, admit defeat, and simply start all over again.