-
The (Wo)Man in the Arena.
In the opening of one of Brene Brown’s books, Daring Greatly, she references a quote by Theodore Roosevelt. I recently came across this quote again. It’s full of powerful words that I feel should really be taken to heart. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;…
-
Mistakes.
The beauty of being human is that we have the ability to learn from our mistakes. In fact, I think learning from our mistakes helps build our character. We have a right to our opinions, and we have a right to change our minds. Humans. are. imperfect. We all make mistakes. Why is that we are so judgmental and misunderstanding when someone makes a mistake? We become critical and accusatory of others, completely ignoring the fact that we, ourselves, also make mistakes. In today’s media, (social and mainstream), we only see/hear/read snippets of stories. I can’t tell you all about food safety in a 30-minute video, let alone a 30 second video that may hold your attention. For you…
-
Happiness.
Philosophers caution against focusing on happiness as the ultimate good in life, and I tend to agree. Happiness is subjective; it’s not a constant. I think we’ve put happiness on this unobtainable pedestal. It’s something that we haven’t actually defined for ourselves as individuals, and we strive for an unrealistic, curated ideal (however it is we perceive that ideal). Basically, we really don’t even know what we are searching for. What we talk about in our culture as happiness is really kind of a revved-up version of happiness. It’s a high-energy [state] — scientists call it a high-arousal positive affect. It’s a feeling, it’s transient, it’s not quality of life, it’s not so…