Category: Friendship

On Pebbles and Diamonds…

Marian D1 Comment

Find me a millennial who has not been swept away by the tide of 21st Century apathy, and you will have found a diamond in the rough. My generation is not the only one subject to this affliction of carelessness, but it is certainly quite common for us to fall between the cracks.

Why is that?

I remember a time when my peers were voicing out their dreams and hopes for the world to anyone who would listen, singing on rooftops and distributing access to makeshift poetry websites, chanting in the street for freedom from hunger, freedom from genocide, freedom from apartheid, and love, love, love! I was one of them.

What happened?

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On Judgment…

Marian D2 Comments

“Do not be the judge of people; do not make assumptions about others. A person is destroyed by holding judgments about others.” – Gautama Buddha

We all face (and, let’s be honest, dish out) judgment every day. What matters is not the judgment itself, although we can often learn something from it. What matters is how we react to it. If we let it get under our skin without cultivating any lesson from it, we lose. We don’t generate any luck by feeling insulted. For the record, we also do not generate any luck by judging others.

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On False Friendship…

Marian DLeave a comment

Show me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.

The people we choose to spend time with play a fundamental role in who we become. If you do not believe this, observe two people who spend a lot of time together and try to map out the similarities between them. Do they have a similar laugh? Do they debate a conversational point using the same rational strategies? Do they share a similar unique behavior, like rubbing their noses when they think, or using words that are uncommon, like “I’m flabbergasted“?

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On Solitude…

Marian DLeave a comment

Solitude has been exalted by history’s greatest writers as the foundation of enlightenment and, as would naturally follow from this newfound wisdom, good writing. One of my favourite authors, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, reflects on solitude as “a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches [yet] sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.” This kind of solitude is creative, self-reflexive, and critical. It is very unlike the isolating solitude you and I may be experiencing today: empty, detached, and quiet despite all the movement, noise and people surrounding us.

It’s safe to say that we are more connected than human civilization has ever been. A short 3 decades ago, had I told my grandmother that she would be able to send me pictures and voice notes instantaneously from half-way across the planet, she would have laughed off my silly childhood faith in that kind of impossible magic. Today, my grandmother can enjoy a roller coaster ride with me in high definition 360° virtual reality if she wants to, and it wouldn’t even surprise her.

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