flâneur

Matthew Wang

2 followers · 6 following · 898 views

on the atlas — 58

highlights — 48

  • To fall in love with your life is to say yes, again and again, to what is present. To care for your own heart as deliberately as you would care for someone you love. To make space for wonder, to nurture attention, to honor the small miracles that populate your days. It is work, yes, but it is also tenderness. It is persistence. It is grace.
    How to Fall in Love with Your Life - by peoples archive
  • The ache you feel when life moves too quickly, when you can’t keep track of days and months and years, is a reminder that you are aware, that you care, that you are still paying attention.
    How to Fall in Love with Your Life - by peoples archive
  • Life becomes tangible when you give yourself enough time to feel it
    How to Fall in Love with Your Life - by peoples archive
  • A meme viewed by a million people has a near net-zero impact on the world. Something you put your soul into could be seen by a hundred people yet really resonate with someone and might change their life. Or yours. Or both.
    You should probably post more | aadil pickle
  • The problem is if you create in a vacuum, you'll have no way to improve.
    You should probably post more | aadil pickle
  • It is not fair for us, as individual parents or as a society, to expect them to bear the weight of our certainties. They are, after all, just children.
    The End of Children | The New Yorker
  • There’s a philosophical view, best associated with the scholar L. A. Paul, that the decision to have children is fundamentally irrational. A rigorous cost-benefit analysis might produce an estimate of a child’s expected value, but the experience is transformative in a way that renders the calculation irrelevant
    The End of Children | The New Yorker
  • Fertility connects perhaps the most significant decision any individual might make with unanswerable questions about our collective fate, so a theory of fertility is necessarily a theory of everything—gender, money, politics, culture, evolution. Eberstadt told me, “The person who explains it deserves to get a Nobel, not in economics but in literature.”
    The End of Children | The New Yorker
  • Popularity was not a mysterious arrangement of personal loyalties within a social code I didn’t understand: it was essentially just the same thing as success. Successful people were popular. You knew whose jokes to laugh at, because they were the people who gave the best speeches and said the cleverest things.
    Even if you beat me - The Dublin Review
  • "[When I write] I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key."
    gracenguyen.ca/montreal
  • First, I wanted to work in ‘difficult’ industries on real, meaningful problems.
    Reflections on Palantir - Nabeel S. Qureshi
  • now tell younger friends that a job—not a shit and stifling one, but one where you can really learn and grow—is actually a great place to spend your early twenties.
    exit interview - by Jasmine Sun - half-baked futures
  • Trust could be nurtured over years of personal relationships and lost in a day
    exit interview - by Jasmine Sun - half-baked futures
  • but still feel alienated by the culture of the country you’re in (4), you’ll still probably feel lonely.
    Loneliness: The Four Circles of Belonging (2/2) - by joss
  • I can say with complete confidence that investing time into relationships has been the single most rewarding thing I’ve done in my life.
    Loneliness: The Four Circles of Belonging (2/2) - by joss
  • I often describe NYC as the internet but in real life. It’s vast, diverse, and distracting at times, but whatever you are looking for you can find it in NYC.
    James Quiambao
  • Lately I’ve been seeing good qualities in people as inherently beautiful. Not like, eyelashes and nails and hair kind of beautiful — but inner radiance, inner goodness. Recognizing this beauty has made life far more vibrant, vivid.
    finding the right people - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • you never meet the same person twice, not even in the same person. If we have that central belief, then a relationship with another person can never be taken for granted.
    old friends - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • people struggle to absorb new material when their working memory is already overloaded
    Why books don't work
  • Rather than “how might we make books actually work reliably,” we can ask: How might we design mediums which do the job of a non-fiction book—but which actually work reliably?
    Why books don't work
  • Academic courses offer more than just metacognitive support for textbooks; their cognitive model is also social and emotional.
    Why books don't work
  • books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don’t realize it.
    Why books don't work
  • The lectures-as-warmup model is a post-hoc rationalization, but it does gesture at a deep theory about cognition: to understand something, you must actively engage with it.
    Why books don't work
  • You wonder if being barefoot so long has actually made it harder to find shoes that don’t hurt.
    relationship shoes - by Aella - Knowingless
  • It’s funny how fundamental components (location, hobbies, job, health, relationships) are like pillars of a building… or, less poetically, a precarious Jenga structure. You only really change one at a time to ensure that the whole doesn’t collapse in on itself. What about when everything changes? How does the center hold?
    letter from: bergen, norway - by Nix 🕊
  • As you reach the checkpoints you’ve had in mind, let them build you up and help you be more ambitious, but don’t let them drag you blindly to those benchmarks.
    On proving yourself | thesephist.com
  • The conventional advice to hit arbitrary career goals like “get to know X person” or “get on Y website” is 10% just-doing-your-thing and 90% tactics, but I think the more fulfilling and effective path is 90% doing the work you would have wanted to do anyway, and filling in that 10% of tactics as opportunities present themselves to you.
    On proving yourself | thesephist.com
  • But fortunately I’ve found that just doing the thing that fulfills you the most also happens to be the fastest way to discover other people who will celebrate your ideas and hard work.
    On proving yourself | thesephist.com
  • It felt like I had taken the first couple solid steps climbing this ladder, and the fear that I would slip on the next rung and fall grew over time, until slowly I managed to convince myself that these weren’t isolated episodes of success, and that perhaps it could be true that people paid attention to my work simply because it was good.
    On proving yourself | thesephist.com
  • If you’re not pulling in your direction, then you’ll never reach that middle ground of mutual interest and connection.
    authenticity - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • it’s very energy-consuming to suppress a part of you or be anyone other than yourself.
    authenticity - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • To have better conversations with anyone, it’s important to ask genuine questions
    authenticity - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • the less you care about a particular topic, the more exhausting it is to talk about it.
    authenticity - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • I remember feeling extremely grateful that he was direct about his intentions instead of just going along with it. Because if you already know what you want from someone, why would you allow any room for misunderstanding? That’s inviting a kind of complexity that serves no purpose but to bring you disappointment and dissatisfaction.
    intentions - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • In 2023, I want to slow—down—time. I want to linger in the moment instead of constantly planning what’s next or thinking about the future or filling my calendar with activities.
    lingering - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • When I think back to some of the wonderful things that happened this year, they were not the result of careful planning but of inspiration and serendipity
    lingering - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • I felt the constant pressure to be productive, that is, to do something that would bear fruit, that would produce some tangible result down the road. Essentially, I was valuing the future much more than the present.
    lingering - by Elaine - manners & mystery
  • We’re all the protagonists of our own stories. And we can get so absorbed in what we’re doing, that we forget about everything going on with everyone else. We are all guilty of getting so caught up in our lives that we don’t check in our those we care about enough.
    Why Is Friendship a Casualty of Growing Up?
  • magical friendship group juju that arises out of regularity.
    How to Live Near Your Friends - by Priya - offscript
  • they were actually thinking much more deeply about every aspect of the customer experience.
    Airbnb Reflections | Greylock
  • One of the company’s big advantages here is that its community of hosts is essentially a network of mini-entrepreneurs who were also using every ounce of their ingenuity to answer that same question.
    Airbnb Reflections | Greylock
  • this course of action would have cost the company something even more important–the trust of its guests and hosts.
    Airbnb Reflections | Greylock
  • For example, when a guest walks into a new apartment for the first time, what are the most important factors that affect their first impression?
    Airbnb Reflections | Greylock
  • Once you’re clear on what you want, say no to things that don’t matter and opt out of meaningless races that don’t bring you closer to it. If you don’t decide your guiding principles ahead of time—out of the heat of the moment—you’ll let the seemingly urgent crowd out the important.
    Why most people pick the wrong career
  • Be careful about chasing moments that make you feel happy. In the most important moments of my life, I didn’t feel happy. I felt anxious about the path ahead. I didn’t feel good enough. I didn’t feel ready enough. I felt heavy—intimidated by a load that I was sure I couldn’t carry.
    Why most people pick the wrong career
  • To figure out what brings you alive and what leaves you depleted, keep an energy journal. Track when you feel engaged and enthusiastic, and when you feel bored and restless.
    Why most people pick the wrong career
  • Forget following your passion, which is far too difficult to figure out. Instead, follow your curiosity.
    Why most people pick the wrong career
  • The antidote to feeling behind is to slow down, stop rushing, take a deep breath (or a few) and remind yourself that the best thing you can do right now is be in this moment.
    on slowness, taste, and living well - by Isabel - Mind Mine