More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 25 - November 4, 2022
most things that people spend money on have an equally satisfying cheap or free alternative.
shaping your life around employment is a short cut not only to motivation and structure, but to social and personal validity.
The basic blueprint for modern first-world living is normalized hyper-abundance and hyper-stimulation, punctuated by desperate attempts at escape when the fallout becomes too distressing.
By extension, if you buy things that rely on continued destruction or suffering for their production, you’re paying for a depressing backstory, which you’ll probably end up blocking out any awareness of…
This neat little term describes a place that is not work or home, but a third kind of place where you feel at ease, and a part of the greater world. Town squares serve this function beautifully in many cultures where they are used as a staple of the community’s ‘going out’ life.
good third place should include the following characteristics: cheap or free easy to get to for many welcoming and comfortable occupants have little or no obligation to be there no emphasis on anyone’s social or economic status both new and familiar faces should be found there a playful mood, where conversation is the main activity feels like a home away from home
Dwight D. Eisenhower described a future where “leisure . . . will be abundant, so that all can develop the life of the spirit, of reflection, of religion, of the arts, of the full realization of the good things of the world.”
Records from 15th century France, for example, show that an average of one day out of every four was an official holiday, frequently of a kind that meant carnival and revelries for the peasantry.
not ‘Will this make my life better?’ but ‘Has my life so far been bad without this in it?’
Your authors have noticed a popular presumption hanging about, that being able to pay for whatever you need, so that you don’t have to rely on anybody else, is a Most Desirable State Of Affairs. But as with so many things, the dose makes the poison: a measure of financial independence is convenient, but make money the dominant mode by which you satisfy needs and wants, and you start missing out on a whole lotta living. You can also become quite a lonely grouch.
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”
If so, consider this: according to a bridal magazine study, the average 2014 spending on an Australian wedding was $65,482. That’s enough to spend between six months and three years travelling together, making amazing lifelong co-memories. Or to pay for an evening’s babysitting and a bottle of champagne once a week, every week, for twelve years of your marriage. We say stick up for yourselves and have a cheap one.
Experiences tend to bring us closer to people in a way that purchases simply can’t. And strong human connections are a better indicator of health and happiness than any other single factor.
A Danish study showed that children who came to school by car, bus or train performed worse on concentration tests than those who walked or rode.
Society teaches that happiness comes from ‘getting’, but nature-time helps kids realise that it also comes from ‘doing’, and even from just ‘being’.
Your job is not to create a being who never suffers, because that’s unrealistic. It’s to create one who deals gracefully with suffering when it comes along, and gets the most out of everything in between.
Whether it’s money, help, time, or things, giving asserts that you have enough to spare, which keeps you from conning yourself into a mindset of not having enough.
Mark Twain once said, “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up”
