Sublime
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The best way to resist a monolithic institution or corporation is not with a monolithic movement but with multiplicity itself.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
In the midst of joy, there’s often a quiver, a shudder of vulnerability. Rather than using that as a warning sign to practice imagining the worst-case scenario, the people who lean into joy use the quiver as a reminder to practice gratitude.
Brené Brown • Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
Both versions are defeatist because they are static. What’s missing from these two ways of telling is an ability to recognize a situation in which you are traveling and have not arrived, in which you have cause both to celebrate and fight, in which the world is always being made
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
In A Paradise Built in Hell, her 2009 book about human response to disasters through history, Solnit describes how communities invariably come together during and after crises, developing new ways not just to survive but to thrive, healing old wounds, and finding joy in the process.
Brian Eno • Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us
Moments of liberation—such as those of revolutionary rupture, or personal “peak experiences”—matter enormously, insofar as they remind us that conditions that once seemed fixed are not, and create opportunities to alter course, decrease domination, start anew. But the practice of freedom—i.e., the morning after, and the morning after that—is what,
... See moreMaggie Nelson • On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint
If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.
Dalai Lama • The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
“Resistance is the secret of joy,” said a banner carried by Reclaim the Streets in the late 1990s, quoting Alice Walker. Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
What we can do, however, is change our own expectations and choose a different way to do our work: not on behalf of “saving the world” but for the people around us. The planet is weeping, yes, but ultimately, the planet will be fine. The question is: How will we be? Our bravery is to continue to trust in human goodness and be present for people as
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