⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🐌 The radical act of slowing down: A meditation on how our obsession with speed and productivity undermines our health, relationships, and chances for lasting success. Read it here.

☯️ Quantum physics, taoism, and the hemispheres: A really fascinating and accessible exploration by physicist Ruth Kastner. Read it here.

❤️‍🔥 The Four Buddhist Mantras for Turning Fear into Love: Thich Nhat Hanh's quiet, practical magic for being fully there with someone you love. Read it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

This week's image of the week comes from Shea Fitzpatrick: a still from his "galaxy in a ball" carbon plasma crystal globe. Inside is mostly krypton with a touch of xenon at about a tenth of sea-level air pressure, and the colors come from a tungsten carbide nanoparticle dopant (plus a few other ingredients) reacting to the field. If you think the image is cool, you have to watch the video.

🌎 The Social Fabric

Many people say they want to "make the world a better place."

This is a beautiful desire.

But so often people pursue this future in a way that's disconnected from their now.

They have a grand, almost utopian, vision of how the world could be.

People will start businesses, write books, and build movements to bring about the change they wish to see.

All the while being disconnected from how they could live from their vision.

People focus on fixing society in an abstract sense while completely neglecting the social fabric around them.

If you want to make the world a better place, it's okay to have a vision of a possible future.

But don't let its beauty blind you from all the ways you could begin seeding that world in the lives of those around you today.

Notice the people who flow in and out of your experience. Who could use some extra kindness? Who needs a call or text? What's something you could do that would be so extraordinarily helpful that it could even restore someone's faith in humanity?

Strands of the future we wish to inhabit can be woven today if we properly attend to the social fabric around us.

😑 We’ve Seen It All

Consider this provocation from Scottish philosopher Ronald Hepburn:

🤓 Learn This Word

Anchorage: A word from the dictionary of obscure sorrows that speaks to the desire to hold on to time as it passes, like trying to keep your grip on a rock in the middle of a river, feeling the weight of the current against your chest while your elders float on downstream, calling over the roar of the rapids, “Just let go—it’s okay—let go.”

🕸️ From Around The Web

Can Adults Learn to Be Playful Again?

“Imagine that after work, a woman decides to take her dog to the park. Although rules mandate that pets must be leashed at this hour, she decides it will be fine to let her dog roam freely since the park is mostly empty. Before long, the dog becomes distracted by a group walking across the park and dashes toward them.

Horrified, the woman worries the dog will jump on them and that they will judge her for breaking the rules. To her surprise, the group is not upset at all. Instead, they smile and say, “Thank you for letting us share in your dog’s joy.” If you imagine yourself in this situation, what would you notice first: the joy of the dog or the violation of the rules?”

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