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Ironic how your comment kind of epitomizes the whole gist of the article. It was well written, and the take away for me was not the closing sentence you quoted
by felideon 11y ago
Ironic how your comment kind of epitomizes the whole gist of the article.
It was well written, and the take away for me was not the closing sentence you quoted. As a father, it echoed a similar sentiment I've been thinking and have read about recently, namely:
> They’d have to learn to lie on the lawn watching ants scale the grass blades; they’d have to linger, digits pruning, in the bathtub; they’d have to stop, to be still, and then to wait, and wait, and wait, allowing time to fatten around them, like a dewdrop on the tip of a leaf. And then, only then, who knows what they might imagine or invent?
- jasode 11y agoIf you like that, you might also like Thoreau's 1854 book "Walden"[1] It is over 100,000 words about ignoring the silly distractions in town and making close observations of nature that help one to "discover oneself". For example, he writes about how he closely watches ant colonies fighting and compares them to the armies in The Iliad, etc, etc. But I do understand that ~1700 words in a magazine article is more digestible than 100k words from a 160 year old book if the themes are unfamiliar to the reader. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
- mgob 11y agoMy favorite line from that book: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
- aswanson 11y agoThat is an incredibly deep soliloquy. Statements like that scared me as a child, they force you to confront the ultimate worth of existence.
- secstate 11y agoThanks for that ... I stuck on that sentence too. What you should really do after reading this article is just stop doing anything for a few minutes. Seriously. Nothing. Don't check your phone, don't flip through the mail. Don't sort dishes in the sink. Don't grab a glass of water. Just sit and don't do anything. I dare you :) My wife can't stand taking a bath with the kids because they always want to be in there for about 20 minutes longer than her sanity allows. I've discovered just sitting there with them, hanging out, watching them play and I love it. Man, if we can't stop and watch the things move around us ...
- ryandrake 11y agoThe meta-irony is that an article lambasting the "TL;DR culture" needed a TL;DR to be palatable. I always appreciate when someone takes the time to summarize these "wall of text" articles, since I tend to not have 30 whole minutes spend while the author tries to get to the point. I need things to be boiled down (I'm looking at you, New Yorker!) and I personally find more utility in skimming 10 articles than fully investing in a single one.
- shadowfox 11y ago> I need things to be boiled down (I'm looking at you, New Yorker!) Then perhaps New Yorker is not the sort of thing you should be reading?