The Curious Corner / Issue #10

Do you sometimes find yourself taking a small pause and just feeling so grateful for being alive? If you think about it, millions of things had to go right for you to be able to read this newsletter. To be a sentient living being. That has been a theme in my mind and consciousness for the last month. Life can be extremely difficult, challenging and full of surprises. But this sensation of being alive remains thrilling.

I hope the coming week brings you moments of rest, pause and awe and wonder. For now, here are some reads from last weenk that made me think -?

• I feel like a lot of us did not give ourselves the permission to truly rest in the last two years. The price was too high - we could not afford to lose that job, could not afford to break down, could not afford to slow down in an ever more demanding world. But this year has been different. This year has taught me how to take rest seriously. How to differentiate between laziness and rest. And I’ve come to think of rest as something you work towards just as much as other things. This piece on resting well was so soothing and made so much sense.

“Rest is like breathing or running. On the one hand, it’s completely natural; on the other hand, it’s something you can learn to do better and, in so doing, you’ll more effectively harness its power to benefit other aspects of your life. Just as swimmers and Buddhist monks learn to use their breath to maintain energy or calm their minds, busy people need to learn how to rest in ways that will help them recharge their mental and physical batteries, and get a burst of creative insight.”

• One feature of human psychology that has been of personal interest to me is how profoundly occurrences in our early childhood affect us for decades afterwards. What happened when we could not even process it completely can completely make or break a part of your psyche. One obvious example is women’s relationships with their bodies. Over time, it has become so rare to find adult women who are happy with their bodies. And there is something that is going wrong in the way body image is formed when we are younger. So I HAD to read?this wonderfully detailed piece?about how we all can do better when it comes to helping children, especially girls form better relationships with their bodies.?

“Another study showed that children as young as three were influenced by their parents' attitude towards weight. Over time, the children's negative associations with large bodies, and awareness of how to lose weight, increased. There is often a gender element to these perceptions, with sons more affected by their fathers' views, and daughters by their mothers' attitudes. The use of dieting to control weight has even been reported in girls as young as five. Here the main factors were exposure to media, as well as conversations about appearance.”

• If you love reading like I do, you are familiar with the urge to read that fantastic book everyone’s talking about, and to read it soon. Today, even if you are not part of a book club, the number of books people “know” about will truly humble you. Is it possible to have a full-time occupation and still read so many books as other people discuss??This piece answered it for me. How we are actually becoming an illiterate society and what “reading” book actually means today. Do read.?

“Books continue to flourish as a commodity, but to other purposes: as vectors of conversation, signalling and setters of agenda. Don’t worry about cheating the author of their impact. Writing a book is mainly about conferring a degree of status on the author, getting her invited to literary festivals and onto Front Row. Hearing it talked about is all that matters.”

• Writing well is a superpower. Even if you don’t read books regularly, I am sure you can spot a good sentence when it is in front of you. The process of writing and the power it holds has been so fascinating for me. And even more so the question of what drives these authors and writers to write. Have you wondered about this too? This piece about why writers write is a lovely collection of perspectives from various writers about the writing experience. Read for some inspiration!?

Nabokov spoke of shimmers too. “Literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him,” he said in a lecture in 1948. “Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story, there is a shimmering go-between.”

If this print ad for WWF by Colenso BBDO does not make you concerned about microplastics in the ocean, I don’t know what will. Fantastic creative work here!

This week I read one of the most heartwarming reads of this year and I thought why not substitute the quotes I share at the end of every issue with some quotes from this wonderful book. Together : A Manifesto Against The Heartless World by Ece Temelkuran is written straight from the heart. A book about how to keep your heart and spirit alive in today’s world, this book will hold your shoulders and give them a little reassuring shake - asking you to keep believing in everything good. Full of wisdom and joy and hope, I do hope you give this book a go.

Some quotes from the book -?

We should all come to terms with the fact that faith is and can be the only reason to act when all is lost. Because believing gives us the ability to make promises and the determination to fulfil them–to create beauty, all sorts of it. My hand does not pat yours while you are reading the menu of Restaurant Hope. I seize the hope-menu from you and put my finger on your chest, saying, ‘I believe in you. And you can believe in me. You must.’

We constantly try to calculate the optimum distance we should stay from reality: close enough not to be completely out of touch but far enough away not to be hurt. However, reality has a devious habit of vindictiveness; sooner or later it will take revenge on those who think they have successfully kept themselves safe and clean by smartly evading its dust and mud.

Pride divides the masses into ‘us and them’, while dignity is about an ‘us’ that excludes no one. This oneness is innate in the meaning of dignity. Dignity is about self-worth that requires no outer evaluation, while pride is related to the value that others grant to us. Restoring pride asks for their recognition through a violent act, promising that such an act will ease the pain of our broken pride. Demanding dignity, however, requires a total overhaul of the system that inflicts injustice, where only those who can afford it are treated as human.

I leave you with these wonderful words to keep you company for the week ahead.?

Till next week, stay curious!?