Books I Like: The Nordic Theory of Everything

What I learned from this book:

I wasn’t going to be thinking about safe paths chosen or acquired comforts held onto. I’d be thinking about love lived, courage shown, and risks taken.

...something they called “the Swedish theory of love.” The core idea is that authentic love and friendship are possible only between individuals who are independent and equal.

People always find fault with their situation no matter how good they have it.

This is what the Nordic theory of love looks like in Finland when a baby is born. As much as possible, the theory is that parents should be able to focus on welcoming new life into the world and loving their newborn, rather than being overwhelmed by the logistical challenges involved.

the modern Nordic goal of supporting every individual’s personal liberty to the greatest extent possible actually begins at the very beginning of every individual’s life, when they are newborn.

A family will not function well as a team unless it is first composed of strong, self-sufficient individuals.

the Nordic theory of love: that all individuals be self-sufficient, so that they can give more purely and generously of their affection and care.

"Human beings are naturally in perpetual war against one another."

...that in the Nordic countries people actually end up being able to create wealth for themselves. Government in the Nordic countries tends to be like a referee who makes sure that the field is level and the rules are followed.

Another way of saying all this is that the Nordic nations have cultivated the single most valuable resource a society can have in the twenty-first century: human capital. That dynamism, innovation, and prosperity result should come as no surprise.

“What makes you have any kind of ambition, it’s grounded in your past, in your childhood, in your youth."

Negative feelings are often a necessary spark for progress. Too much optimism can actually hinder people in the pursuit of their goals.

As Oettingen explains, positive thinking can fool our minds into perceiving that we’ve already attained our goal, which slackens our readiness to pursue it.

When you feel that your life might fall apart any minute, even a hint of negativity can seem like the last straw.

Books I Like: Act 3 The Art Of Growing Older

What I learned from this book:

Act 1 – that’s the growing up bit. If it was a season, you’d call it spring. The baby, the child, the teenager and the young adult.

Act 2 is busy. There is money to earn, a career to grow, maybe a life partner or long-term relationships and, for many, raising children, and coping with the decline of their own parents.

We could summarise Act 3 as a big time of change and increasing loss. From eyesight to waistlines, routines of work and family life, it’s all change. And for most women, the physical and emotional upheaval of the menopause will be a major part of their transition into Act 3, and can feel like the end of the world. (It isn’t.)

Our Act 4, when we can be as helpless as a baby, but with the mind of a sage, sitting in a care home with a TV on at full volume. But we’re not there yet.

"Your way of life has so little to do with what you feel and love in the world."

If your goals are inconsistent with what’s fundamentally important to you, you’ll find it harder to gather the motivation.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.

– Unknown

Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

A bad attitude is like a flat tyre.

You can’t move until you change it.

If you believe you can,

or believe you can’t,

you are right.

– Henry Ford

Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.

...for a successful happy life in Act 3, you need a purpose – a sense of who you are and where you are going. A reason to get up every day. It could be to save the world, or it could be to walk the dog. Both give purpose. Both can feed the soul.

Another way to find and build purpose

Here’s a tool to think about it which comes from the Japanese concept of Ikigai, where purpose is described as a balance of:

•  what you love

•  what the world needs

•  what you’re good at

•  what you can be rewarded for

It’s sometimes easier to identify what our values are when they get denied.

Eat half. Walk double. Laugh triple.

And love without measure.

– Tibetan proverb

Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be.

– Thomas Merton, writer and monk

Working just for money – without real emotional commitment – will rust your soul.

this Irish saying: ‘Mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne’, which translates as:

You are the place where I stand on the day when my feet are sore.

Let it go. Let it out.

Let it all unravel.

Let it free and it can be

A path on which to travel.

– Michael Leunig

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.

– Muhammad Ali

You cannot go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

– James R. Sherman, Rejection

A Wrinkle In Time

My favorite lines from this book:

Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn’t happen to be the usual pace.

I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be.

‘But I never say anything. You just seem to know.’ ‘Everything about you tells me,’ Charles said.

The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.

Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honourable.

Faith is the sister of justice.

‘No, Meg, but people are more than just the way they look. Charles Wallace’s difference isn’t physical. It’s in essence.’

To action little, less to words inclined.’

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.

Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.

The more a man knows, the less he talks.

You see, though we travel together, we travel alone.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal.

‘I wanted you to do it all for me. I wanted everything to be all easy and simple… So I tried to pretend that it was all your fault… because I was scared, and I didn’t want to have to do anything myself —’

Books I Like: Run Away

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 My favorite lines from this book:

He didn’t believe in karma, but then again there was no reason to poke karma in the ribs.

She wasn’t big on melodrama for one thing, but more than that, she wouldn’t want him expressing thoughts like this when she couldn’t reciprocate or at least comment. Declarations of love or loss with no response were meaningless to her. It was like playing catch with yourself. It had to go two ways.

In the end, Ingrid had discovered, as she put it, that searching the whole world just makes you find home.

...that in the battle of nature vs nurture, nature kicks complete and total ass

The world had always been a place of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” When that breaks down, for better or worse, so does your society.

It isn’t about talent or skill. You could be LeBron James, but if you’re using a basketball with no air, you’re not going to be able to dribble as well as someone whose ball got plenty.

The mind likes to wander under stress.

Once one lie is let in the room, even for the best of reasons, a whole bunch more will ride in on its back. Then those lies will gang up and slaughter the truth.

He could make the standard whining observation about how the youngsters were all staring at their little screen or had headphones jammed into their ears, how they all wanted to shut out the world so that they could be surrounded by people and yet completely alone.

A man knows his great love’s various smiles. That was what they said—the smile when she was happy or the smile when she was genuinely laughing or the smile when she peered into the eyes of the man she loved, all that.

This phenomenon also explains why time seems to go faster as you age. When you’re a child, experiences are new and so your memories are fresh and intense—so again time seems to slow down. As you grow older, especially when you are stuck in a routine, very few new or vibrant memories are being laid and so time flies by. That’s why when a child looks back on summer, it seemed to last forever. For adults, it’s barely a blink.

There are few moments of pure bliss in this life. Most of the time, you don’t realize that you are having one of those moments until they are over.

Books I Like: The Marble Collector

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my favorite lines from the book:

I fully believe that even a sudden change in a person’s behaviour is within the confines of their nature.

Always keep an eye on the target, Fergus, and your brain will make it happen.

Things we want to forget, things we can’t forget, things we forgot we’d forgotten until we remember them. There is a new category. We all have things we never want to forget. We all need a person to remember them just in case.

Hurtful things are roots, they spread, branch out, creep under the surface touching other parts of the lives of those they hurt. It’s never one mistake, it’s never one moment, it becomes a series of moments, each moment growing roots and spurting in different directions. And over time they become muddled like an old twisted tree, strangling itself and tying itself up in knots.

Perhaps it’s true that you never know yourself until someone else truly knows you.

Not being immersed in the thing I am most passionate about, but on the edges, on the outside looking in. Window-shopping with a full wallet. Shopping with an empty wallet. Whatever. Feeling outside, pacing the edges, feeling redundant.