What I’ve read:
J.K. Rowling Harvard commencement speech.
I don’t know about you, but Harry Potter books were a major part of my childhood.
There were not to first book I read, but they were the ones that made me fall in love with reading.
The two things that Rowling wanted to convey in her speech were the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination.
However, and additional thing that I got out of it was that she has truly achieved mastery in the use of English language. The way she expresses herself is both beautiful and powerful.
I guess it’s really no wonder that she is one of the most successful writers of all time.
Click here to read or watch the full speech.
What I’ve watched:
Simon Critchley’s lecture “To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die.”
Simon Critchley is an English philosopher and a philosophy professor.
In this lecture he discusses his work, “The Book of Dead Philosophers.”
The best way to express my thoughts on this lecture is to say that, after hearing it, Critchley’s book is now on my reading list (that is already too long).
As a person who has been meditating on death daily for almost 1000 days and has written a lot about it, I didn’t need any convincing from Critchley about the importance of thinking about death.
However, you might do if my Memento Mori Meditations posts weren’t convincing enough. So instead of listening to me, listen to an actual philosophy professor.
One thing that I believe most of you will like is that this is not a dry, sterile lecture.
Critchley is charismatic and quite a character I would say.
Also, I recommend you also listen to the Q&A section at the end.
What I’ve been thinking about:
It gets better.
Once it gets better, will it keep getting better forever? No.
Once it gets better, will it be better than it ever was? Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe that first “better” is just better than the low point you are currently at.
But it does get better.
Thank you for reading.
Stay strong, love life, and never feel sorry for yourself.
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