Emerson’s Truth

“The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.”

The American Scholar – Emerson’s 1837 oration.

Inspiration

Social Network Sadness

Wedding © Natalia Martinez

From The Anti Social Network article in Slate:

The human habit of overestimating other people’s happiness is nothing new, of course. Jordan points to a quote by Montesquieu: “If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.” But social networking may be making this tendency worse… By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people’s lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles’ heel of human nature […] By helping other people look happy, Facebook is making us sad “…happiness is impersonal in a way that pain is not…”

It Starts with Us

“It Starts with Us” is an organization focused on crazy, lofty goals giving back and changing the world. Their message is simple: sign up and they will send you an weekly email with a 15-minute assignment. The goal? To do something that helps, supports, uplifts someone and to build a community of individuals focused on making a positive impact. Their conceptual framework? Small incremental change ripples out and eventually tips over into real, tangible change. It is our personal responsibility to improve the world around us, so I personally love the model of this organization and have definitely signed up! Considering that in college, Tal Ben-Shahar’s “Positive Psychology” class taught me that the value of kindness and philanthropy is in part selfish – and not in the bad way – in that it helps you be a happier and more purposeful person, It Starts With Us is a win-win for everyone. To read more about it, see here.

Truth

This essentially sums up how I feel about this week, this month, and pretty much from now until December. I have never been one to shy away from having too many things on my plate, but starting off this semester I knew that I would have to bunker down and focus in a way that I have not had to do in a long time and that I have never done particularly well. Since most of the things on my figurative plate are of high-to-paramount importance, the current state of affairs entails balancing all of them in equal measure with  minimal tolerance for trade-offs. I am sure in four months, through the beauty that retrospective adds, this will seem like a fulfilling and challenging adventure that is  – thankfully – over, but my goal is to have it take on this shape in the present: to enjoy the stress, the ambiguity, the hectic rushing around…if for no other reason, that I am invested in the tangible process of molding my own future.

Work Intermission

Childhood at the Met © Natalia Martinez

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” – Victor Borge

Ladies, sit at the table

I recommend watching this video by Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg. I was prompted to look for it after reading this great piece in The New Yorker about her, and I recommend it for any woman trying to figure out the workforce.

And so, without any further ado, here is the TED video!

Layover transitions

Mojito © Natalia Martinez

It might be odd but airports make me feel optimistic. The constant coming and going, the ebb and flow of people and things in perpetual motion – they leave me somewhat refreshed by the realization that inertia moves everything forward and that change is transient. I’ve been in airports too many times to count – on vacation, immigrating from one country to another, leaving to go to college, flying oversees with no return flight booked, dropping off a loved one – and almost every time has represented some sort of change (as trite as that may sound). In this sense, airports are communities of people in transition, and the fact that we can recognize that similarity in one another, sometimes makes me smile as I lug my carry-on around.

Worth sharing

Setting off to do things I can’t disclose…

© Natalia Martinez

Based on this 5-minute TED talk, I have decided to take on 30-day challenges. As I tend to do, I am firmly planted in my logic that “I can do almost anything for 30 days,” a close relative of what our coxswain used to yell in intramural crew practice “You can do anything for the next 20 seconds.” Despite being a blatant psychological crutch with a dash of underhanded self-deception, I’ve decided this logic is healthy. More importantly – as attested to in the video, it has the potential to propel us forward, give us new habits, empower us to try new things or (actually) stick with old ones.

Now, I know this will seem anticlimactic, but I can’t actually share what my 30-day objectives are! To explain this logic, here is another TED talk of the short-but-enlightening kind. The idea presented in it is that we shouldn’t share out goals! Although it sounded a bit counterintuitive to me (I assumed that sharing one’s objectives made one feel more accountable for them), psychologists have found that sharing your goals makes you less likely to follow through with them.

Why? Because people usually respond positively to our stated intentions, making us feel content even before we have actually. done. any.thing.

The warm feeling we get from having social approval/acknowledgement of our goals makes us too happy, thus replacing the feeling of urgency and the awareness of the hard work that the intentions-into-reality trick usually requires.  It makes us complacent.

So I guess I will report back only after the next 30 days have passed! 🙂