"The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!" | Fyodor Dostoevsky
Make time for literature and poetry
Here is a podcast to rethink your career principles.
Before we begin, here is some poetry from Mary Oliver. Reading this will help you put your work in context. Pay attention to the closing lines.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Believe it or not, some people are now outraged by Oliver’s poem comparing her to a glamorized Rupi Kaur. They say that they are so bogged down by life and its inequities that they are just figuring out ways to pay rent and deal with stuff.
To them, we will just say that paying rent is important but that should not prevent you from thinking about your deeper purpose in life.
“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time,” once quipped Mary Oliver.
There is no upside to becoming a cynic. Resist the urge.
Today we will discuss the lessons from Dostoevsky. Here are 9 of his most memorable quotes:
"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's." (Crime and Punishment)
"The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!" (Crime and Punishment)
"The soul is healed by being with children." (The Idiot)
"Beauty will save the world." (The Idiot)
"Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human." (Notes from Underground)
"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for." (The Brothers Karamazov)
"If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself." (Demons)
"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others." (The Brothers Karamazov)
"What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love." (The Brothers Karamazov)