This is a beautiful insight. Reverses traditional assumptions about weakness into a hidden strength. Reminded me of an echo: “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.” ― Mother Teresa

"The effect of mass media is to industrialize our thinking. To commercialize it. That's no good for the free thinker, the honest thinker, the authentic thinker." — Alain de Botton

My favorite poet

From the poet, David Whyte: "Weeping may be the closest experience human beings have to an experience of enlightenment. Because in weeping, you've given up. You've broken down. Whatever control you wanted over the world has slipped out of your hands. Whatever way you wanted to keep heartbreak at bay, whatever way you wanted to keep grief at bay, those perimeters have all been broken down by the grief, the loss, the person leaving you, by the diagnosis you've just been given in the hospital. You've actually dropped down below this perimeter, and it breaks apart through that overflow of emotions. The reason you're weeping is because you haven't built a body that can hold that revelation, but now you're just about to do it. You're breaking open this controlled edge that you've had. You've surrounded it, and it's breaking out of there. You're actually becoming larger through the weeping. Albert Camus, the French philosopher, said: "Live to the point of tears." That's not an invitation to modeling sentimentality. That's an invitation to feeling everything as much as you can feel it all the time, in beauty and in sorrow. Don't hide it from yourself. Don't just try and feel everything. It's because we're afraid of the consequences of feeling that we won't allow it. (This is a paraphrase from my interview with him)

Does Alain de Botton write with AI?

As wild as it sounds: this is one of the single most important things you can do in hospitality.

You can divide humanity into how people respond to their pain: some people drink their pain away, some people talk their pain away, some people exercise their pain away, some people achieve their pain away.

Alain de Botton has written ~17 books and runs the School of Life YouTube channel, which now has almost 10 million subscribers. And this is a rare interview for him. Some highlights: 1. A clear night sky is a challenge to everything we think we know. 2. If we really took on board what that night sky is telling us, we'd have to lie down and just question absolutely everything. 3. Writer's block is a conflict between shame and the desire for honesty. 4. The effect of mass media is to industrialize and commercialize our thinking, which leaves no room for the free thinker, the honest thinker, and the authentic thinker. 5. You've got to be attentive to your own sensations and thoughts. That's the real work of writing. 6. Every person is an incredible library of sensations but so often, particularly in the academic world, people think: “Let’s ignore ourselves as a source of data and find out what Cicero said, or what Socrates said, or what Michel Foucault said." 7. Writing can be revenge for the silenced person, which is why so many writers are meek in person but fierce on the page. 8. A work of art is the best thing you can do with your dislocation and distress, and sometimes, it’s even an alternative to losing your mind. 9. Emerson said: "In the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts." 10. The thoughts of geniuses aren’t fundamentally different from others. It’s just that they’re able to put words to sensations we’ve long felt but couldn’t articulate. 11. Writing prompt: If there were no rules, if you couldn't fail, if no one was going to laugh, if you were going to be dead tomorrow, what would you actually do and say? How would you write, let's say? That's the thing you should write. I've shared the full conversation with Alain de Botton below. You can watch here or on YouTube, and listen on Apple or Spotify. You'll find the links in the reply tweets.

Perfect name for a playlist because those years were, indeed, a Golden Age. Avicii was king. SoundCloud was like a box of treasures. The big festivals still felt fresh. We were experiencing the magic of smartphones and infinite music for the first time.

Perfect name for a playlist because those years were, indeed, the golden age. Avicii was king. SoundCloud was like a box of treasures. The big festivals still felt fresh. We were experiencing the magic of smartphones for the first time, which meant access to infinite music.