Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. You realise that most of the bad behaviour of other people really
comes down to fear and anxiety – rather than, as it is generally
easier to presume, nastiness or idiocy. You loosen your hold on self-
righteousness and stop thinking of the world as populated by either
monsters or fools. It makes things less black and white at first, but
in time, a great deal more interesting.
2. You learn that what is in your head can’t automatically be
understood by other people. You realise that, unfortunately, you will
have to articulate your intentions and feelings with the use of words
– and can’t fairly blame others for not getting what you mean until
you’ve spoken calmly and clearly.
3. You learn that – remarkably – you do sometimes get things wrong.
With huge courage, you take your first faltering steps towards (once
in a while) apologising.
4. You learn to be confident not by realising that you’re great, but by
learning that everyone else is just as stupid, scared and lost as you
are. We’re all making it up as we go along, and that’s fine.
5. You stop suffering from impostor syndrome because you can accept
that there is no such thing as a legitimate anyone. We are all, to
varying degrees, attempting to act a role while keeping our follies
and wayward sides at bay.
6. You forgive your parents because you realise that they didn’t put
you on this earth in order to insult you. They were just painfully out
of their depth and struggling with demons of their own. Anger turns,
at points, to pity and compassion.
7. You learn the enormous influence of so-called ‘small’ things on
mood: bed-times, blood sugar and alcohol levels, degrees of
background stress etc. And as a result, you learn never to bring up
an important, contentious issue with a loved one until everyone is
well rested, no one is drunk, you’ve had some food, nothing else is
alarming you and you aren’t rushing to catch a train.
8. You realise that when people close to you nag you, or are
unpleasant or vindictive, they usually aren’t just trying to wind you
up, they may be trying to get your attention in the only way they
know how. You learn to detect the desperation beneath your loved
one’s less impressive moments – and, on a good day, you interpret
them with love rather than judge them.
9. You give up sulking. If someone hurts you, you don’t store up the
hatred and the hurt for days. You remember you’ll be dead soon.
You don’t expect others to know what’s wrong. You tell them
straight and if they get it, you forgive them. And if they don’t, in a
different way, you forgive them too.
10. You realise that because life is so very short, it’s extremely
important that you to try to say what you really mean, focus on
what you really want, and tell those you care about that they matter
immensely to you. Probably every day.
11. You cease to believe in perfection in pretty much every area. There
aren’t any perfect people, perfect jobs or perfect lives. Instead, you
pivot towards an appreciation of what is (to use the psychoanalyst
Donald Winnicott’s exemplary phrase) ‘good enough.’ You realise
that many things in your life are at once quite frustrating – and yet,
in many ways, eminently good enough.
12. You learn the virtues of being a little more pessimistic about how
things will turn out – and as a result, emerge as a calmer, more
patient and more forgiving soul. You lose some of your idealism and
become a far less maddening person (less impatient, less rigid, less
angry).
13. You learn to see that everyone’s weaknesses of character are linked
to counter-balancing strengths. Rather than isolating their
weaknesses, you look at the whole picture: yes, someone is rather
pedantic, but they’re also beautifully precise and a rock at times of
turmoil. Yes someone is a bit messy, but at the same time brilliantly
creative and very visionary. You realise (truly) that perfect people
don’t exist – and that every strength will be tagged with a
weakness.
14. You learn the virtues of compromise. You learn to settle in certain
areas – and recognise that you’re being mature rather than weak
when you do so. You might stay together with someone primarily for
the children, or because you’re afraid of being alone. You might put
up with some inconveniences because you know that a friction-free
life is a mirage.
15. You fall in love a bit less easily. It’s difficult, in a way. When you
were less mature, you could develop a crush in an instant. Now,
you’re poignantly aware that everyone, however externally
charming or accomplished, would be a bit of a pain from close up.
You develop loyalty to what you already have.
16. You learn that you are – rather surprisingly – quite a difficult person
to live with. You shed some of your earlier sentimentality towards
yourself. You go into friendships and relationships offering others
kindly warnings of how and when you might prove a challenge.
17. You learn to forgive yourself for your errors and foolishness. You
realise the unfruitful self-absorption involved in simply flogging
yourself for past misdeeds. You become more of a friend to yourself.
Of course you’re an idiot, but you’re still a loveable one, as we all
are.
18. You learn that part of what maturity involves is making peace with
the stubbornly child-like bits of you that will always remain. You
cease trying to be a grown up at every occasion. You accept that we
all have our regressive moments – and when the inner two year old
you rears its head, you greet them generously and give them the
attention they need.
19. You cease to put too much hope in grand plans for the kind of
happiness you expect can last for years. You celebrate the little
things that go well. You realise that satisfaction comes in increments
of minutes. You’re delighted if one day passes by without too much
bother. You take a greater interest in flowers and in the evening
sky. You develop a taste for small pleasures.
20. What people in general think of you ceases to be such a concern.
You realise the minds of others are muddled places and you don’t
try so hard to polish your image in everyone else’s eyes. What
counts is that you and one or two others are OK with you being you.
You give up on fame and start to rely on love.
21. You get better at hearing feedback. Rather than assuming that
anyone who criticises you is either trying to humiliate you or is
making a mistake, you accept that maybe it would be an idea to
take a few things on board. You start to see that you can listen to a
criticism and survive it – without having to put on your armour and
deny there was ever a problem.
22. You realise the extent to which you tend to live, day by day, in too
great a proximity to certain of your problems and issues. You
remember – more and more – that you need to get perspective on
things that pain you. You take more walks in nature, you might get
a pet (they don’t fret like we do) and you appreciate the distant
galaxies above us in the night sky.
23. You cease to be so easily triggered by people’s negative behaviour.
Before getting furious or riled or upset, you pause to wonder what
they might really have meant. You realise that there may be a
disjuncture between what someone said and what you immediately
assumed they meant.
24. You recognise how your distinctive past colours your response to
events – and learn to compensate for the distortions that result. You
accept that, because of how your childhood went, you have a
predisposition to exaggerate in certain areas. You become
suspicious of your own first impulses around particular topics. You
realise – sometimes – not to go with your feelings.
25. When you start a friendship, you realise that other people don’t
principally want to know your good news, so much as gain an
insight into what troubles and worries you, so that they can in turn
feel less lonely with the pains of their own hearts. You become a
better friend because you see that what friendship is really about is
a sharing of vulnerability.
26. You learn to calm your anxieties not by telling yourself that
everything will be fine. In many areas, it won’t. You build up a
capacity to think that even where things go wrong, they are broadly
survivable. You realise that there is always a plan B; that the world
is broad, that a few kindly souls are always to be found and that the
most horrid things are, in the end, endurable.
ADICTOS AL ESPECTÁCULO DE LA POLÍTICA
Lo más visible que resta de esa tradición monárquica son los Windsor,
cuya única función es disfrazarse para encandilar a la plebe con
sus uniformes llenos de medallas, con carrozas y penachos. Eso,
y alimentar el cotilleo con escándalos de alcoba donde la princesa se
acuesta con el palafrenero o el fotógrafo.
Tolstoy was not, however, according to the diaries of his wife, Sonya,
much of a moral-ethical giant around the house.
"He pushes everything off onto me," she wrote, "everything, without
exception: the children, the management of his property, relations with
other people, business affairs, the house, the publishers. Then he despises
me for soiling my hands with them all, retreats into his selfishness and
complains about me incessantly...goes for walks, rides his horse, writes a
little, goes wherever he pleases, does absolutely nothing for the
family....His biographers will tell how he went to draw water for the
porter, but no one will know how he never gave his wife one moments
rest or one drop of water to his sick child; how in thirty-five years he
never sat for five minutes by a bedside or let me have a rest or sleep the
night through or go for a walk or simply pause for a moment to recover
my strength."
Yet his writing is full of compassion. That's what he's known for. He
emanates concern for the weak and powerless, sees all sides of every
issue, inhabits character after character (low people, lofty people, horses,
dogs, you name it, and the resulting fictional world feels nearly as detailed
and various as the real one. A person can hardly read even a few lines of
Tolstoy without feeling her interest in life renewed.
Well, of course, the writer is not the person. The writer is a version of
the person who makes a model of the world that may seem to advocate
for certain virtues, virtues by which he may not be able to live.
22 mar 2024
En julio de 1914, Albert Einstein le hizo llegar a su esposa, Mileva, a
través de un amigo común una nota donde le explicaba lo que tenía que
hacer para que pudieran seguir juntos: lavarle la ropa, prepararle tres
comidas diarias y limpiarle la habitación y el despacho (que solo utilizaría
él). “Te abstendrás de cualquier relación conmigo, salvo que sea necesario
por motivos sociales”, le decía, y la obligaba a renunciar a pasar tiempo
con él en casa y a hacer viajes juntos. El tercer punto se refería a
cuestiones muy concretas: nada de intimidad, reducir al mínimo cualquier
trato si él se lo exigía, no predisponer a sus hijos contra él. Eran sus
condiciones, y le pedía a Mileva que las aceptara.
Drakulic, Slavenka
Mileva Einstein, teoría de la tristeza
EBOOK +
Por cierto, la Monarquía Hispánica no puso en duda que las culturas que
se encontraron en América eran muy avanzadas y los teólogos y juristas
españoles del siglo XVI reconocieron la racionalidad del indio, lo que
supuso el reconocimiento también de sus derechos, entre otros, el de
ser hombres libres, hijos de Dios, «personas» y no seres
infrahumanos, propietarios de sus tierras. ¿Por qué ha dejado de
estudiarse esto en las escuelas? ¿No les pica la curiosidad?
Tampoco estará de más recordar que durante los últimos 20 años, las
empresas mineras canadienses han extraído de Méjico cinco veces
más oro que el que se extrajo durante los 300 años del periodo
virreinal y que las enormes ganancias de esta explotación contrastan con
su ínfima contribución al bien público: escasos empleos y reducidos
impuestos. Por ejemplo, en el año 2019, los ingresos fiscales de la
extracción de minerales metálicos y no metálicos representaron apenas el
0.13% de la recaudación total del gobierno federal mejicano por actividad
económica; en 2020 aportó el 0.32% y en 2021 el 0.97%. Las empresas
canadienses no se limitan al oro, tiene presencia en la extracción de todos
los tipos de metales, como por ejemplo en la plata, metal del cual Méjico
es el mayor productor mundial. En Méjico, alrededor del 75% de las
concesiones mineras fueron a parar a manos extranjeras, la mayoría
canadienses. ¿Por qué no denuncian esta situación ante sus respectivos
gobiernos? ¿Por qué siguen culpando a España de todos sus males
presentes y futuros?
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