The Spirituality of Imperfection
Because our problem, it turns out, was never that we hadn’t yet found the right way to achieve control over life, or safety from life. Our real problem was imagining that any of that might be possible in the first place for finite humans, who, after all, just find themselves unavoidably in life, with all the limitations and feelings of claustrophob
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
When we get lost in our stories, we lose touch with our actual experience. Leaning into the future, or rehashing the past, we leave the living experience of the immediate moment. Our trance deepens as we move through the day driven by “I have to do more to be okay” or “I am incomplete; I need more to be happy.” These “mantras” reinforce the trance-
... See moreTara Brach • Radical Acceptance
The point is not that we should embrace pain, loss, and death. The idea of such an embrace is just another version of the religious ideal of being absolved from vulnerability. If we embraced pain we would not suffer, if we embraced loss we would not mourn, and if we embraced death we would not be anxious about our lives. Far from advocating such in
... See moreMartin Hägglund • This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
The only sensible path forward is to learn to accept the brokenness of human life, to develop resilience in the face of its petty cruelties, and to learn to live with yourself.