Presidential biographies also provided context, countering the tendency to think “that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult,” he said. “It just serves you well to think about Roosevelt trying to navigate through World War II.”

Mr. Obama’s long view of history and the optimism (combined with a stirring reminder of the hard work required by democracy) that he articulated in his farewell speech last week are part of a hard-won faith, grounded in his reading, in his knowledge of history (and its unexpected zigs and zags), and his embrace of artists like Shakespeare who saw the human situation entire: its follies, cruelties and mad blunders, but also its resilience, decencies and acts of grace. The playwright’s tragedies, he says, have been “foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings.”

The writings of Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Mr. Obama found, were “particularly helpful” when “what you wanted was a sense of solidarity,” adding “during very difficult moments, this job can be very isolating.” “So sometimes you have to sort of hop across history to find folks who have been similarly feeling isolated, and that’s been useful.” There is a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Bedroom, and sometimes, in the evening, Mr. Obama says, he would wander over from his home office to read it.

During his eight years in the White House — in a noisy era of information overload, extreme partisanship and knee-jerk reactions — books were a sustaining source of ideas and inspiration, and gave him a renewed appreciation for the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition.“At a time when events move so quickly and so much information is transmitted,” he said, reading gave him the ability to occasionally “slow down and get perspective” and “the ability to get in somebody else’s shoes.” These two things, he added, “have been invaluable to me. Whether they’ve made me a better president I can’t say. But what I can say is that they have allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and doesn’t let up.”

Mr. Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his life — from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when “these worlds that were portable” provided companionship, to his youth when they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was important.

What role does reading play in your life?It is one of the chief ways that I learn, and has been since I was a kid. These days, I also get to visit interesting places, meet with scientists and watch a lot of lectures online. But reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding.For example, this year I enjoyed Richard Dawkins’s “The Magic of Reality,” which explains various scientific ideas and is aimed at teenagers. Although I already understood all the concepts, Dawkins helped me think about the topics in new ways. If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t really understand it.

“You only get one mind and one body. And it’s got to last a lifetime. Now, it’s very easy to let them ride for many years. But if you don’t take care of that mind and that body, they’ll be a wreck forty years later, just like the car would be.” — Warren Buffett

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. so I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.” — Warren Buffett

Just be mindful about improving yourself. Here are some simple ways to do it: Mind: read a book (even if it’s just one page a day), journal, come up with ideas. Body: exercise (even if it’s just for 7 minutes), eat good food, drink plenty of water, get a good night’s sleep. Spirit: pray (it doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not) or just says ‘thanks’, be kind to people, write a gratitude list.

If all giant viruses turn out to share translation-related genes that are unique to their group, then it would mean they had a large common ancestor, an ancient virus that diversified over time, and it would lend support to the idea that giant viruses started out big and constitute their own domain of life.

That mingling has sparked contentious debate among scientists about when and how giant viruses evolved. All of viral evolution is murky: Different groups of viruses likely had very different origins. Some may have been degenerate “escapees” from cellular genomes, while others descended directly from the primordial soup. “Still others have recombined and exchanged genes so many times in the course of evolution that we will never know where they originally came from,” Fischer said.

It is not really a trifling effort, as those will discover who have yet to essay it. To “clear” even seven hours and a half from the jungle is passably difficult. For some sacrifice has to be made. One may have spent one’s time badly, but one did spend it; one did do something with it, however ill-advised that something may have been. To do something else means a change of habits. And habits are the very dickens to change! Further, any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. If you imagine that you will be able to devote seven hours and a half a week to serious, continuous effort, and still live your old life, you are mistaken. I repeat that some sacrifice, and an immense deal of volition, will be necessary. And it is because I know the difficulty, it is because I know the almost disastrous effect of failure in such an enterprise, that I earnestly advise a very humble beginning. You must safeguard your self-respect. Self-respect is at the root of all purposefulness, and a failure in an enterprise deliberately planned deals a desperate wound at one’s self-respect. Hence I iterate and reiterate: Start quietly, unostentatiously.

What I suggest is that at six o’clock you look facts in the face and admit that you are not tired (because you are not, you know), and that you arrange your evening so that it is not cut in the middle by a meal. By so doing you will have a clear expanse of at least three hours. I do not suggest that you should employ three hours every night of your life in using up your mental energy. But I do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions. You will still have the terrific wealth of forty-five hours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Monday. If you persevere you will soon want to pass four evenings, and perhaps five, in some sustained endeavour to be genuinely alive. And you will fall out of that habit of muttering to yourself at 11.15 p.m., “Time to be thinking about going to bed.” The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.

From urban ancient Greece to agrarian societies, work was either something to be outsourced to others – often slaves – or something to be done as quickly as possible so that the rest of life could happen.

What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

Important skillset that can be used for direct work in a wide range of causesWeb design is a skill that’s in-demand in many types of organisations, from charities to startups, giving you great flexibility and the opportunity to work on high impact projects.Organisations that are especially high-impact to work at or volunteer for include:Government departments, such as Obama’s US Digital Service and 18F or the UK’s Government Digital Service.Effective non-profits, such as those recommended by GiveWell, Giving What We Can and The Life you Can Save.Innovative for-profits, such as Google, which now has seven products with over one billion monthly active users (Search, Gmail, Android, Chrome, Google Play, Maps and Youtube)1, or AirBnB.For-profits focused on the global poor, such as Sendwave.Effective Altruist organisations.

Part-time advocacy journalismDue to the rise of online publications it is becoming easier to get published, which opens up the opportunity to pursue advocacy journalism part-time, as a freelancer alongside another job that pays the bills. We know of several people who are successfully pursuing this option.

Documentary film-making seems like a form of art with a good chance of direct and advocacy impact, in that it resembles investigative journalism. It also appears stronger in terms of network and transferability of skills. As a result, we would expect a career profile on documentary film-making to be more positive than this one.

So if you’re choosing between several options, it’s helpful to do your research ahead of time. But eventually you need to actually try things. The closer you can get to actually doing the work, the better. For example, if you’re considering doing economics research, actually try some research and see how well you do, rather than just think about how much you enjoy studying it – studying a subject is very different from actually doing research.This is true whether you’re at the start of your career or near the end, and whether you’re planning what to do long-term, comparing two offers, or considering quitting your job.So, if there’s a job you’re interested in, see if there’s a way to try it out ahead of time. If you’re considering three long-term options and aren’t sure which to take, see if you can try out each of them over the coming years.

5. It’s better to figure out philanthropy yourself. You say: > “My only hint is: be a Hannah Smith. She wants to help war orphans in the Congo, so she helps them. I would wish Hannah luck but also I think it would be useful for her to be linked in with informed people with similar goals to her, so they could bounce ideas off one another about how each could do their jobs more effectively.” You say “let your own brain and heart be your guide”. I’d say: don’t go it alone. Figuring out how to do good philanthropy is an enormous problem, so whether or not it’s from within this particular community, get support so that your goals are effectively realised.

FLAW #5: There’s an Alternative to EA that’s Far Superior: I call it “DIY Philanthropy” Effective Altruism provides too much advice and too many judgmental opinions on who, how, or why to fund. This renders us passive because EA insists that it’s already done the research and ethical thinking for us. Compassionate people don’t need Big Brother informing them what right or wrong, how to help others. EA is just an obstacle in the path of a far better activity: DIY Philanthropy. I won’t provide your with lengthy instructions detailing how to accomplish this. being a DIY Human means figuring it out yourself. My only hint is: be a Hannah Smith. She wants to help war orphans in the Congo, so she helps them. You don’t need Peter Singer and EA telling you how to be charitable. Let your own brain and heart be your guide.

Effective Altruism has Five Serious Flaws - Avoid It - Be a DIY Philanthropist Instead

Oedipus, “Not to be born, O man, is the highest, the greatest word. But if you have seen the light of day, then consider it best to depart as quickly as possible to whence you came.”

“It is a pretty nasty world”: Why more Indians choose not to have kids

Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?

we neglect to think about just how much video games influence, shape, and impact our culture, history, and way of life.

Hedgehog & Fox You have emphasized ethical action, but a worry I always have about traditions which emphasize renunciation and detachment is what that means for politics and political engagement and the ability to effect any change. Now, both traditions would say the world is so far from perfect and everything is so impermanent that we’re never going to achieve a perfect political state of being. But is there a danger that if we’re attending too much to this kind of advice that we may just think all sorts of wrongs will go unrighted. Can you say something about how you see going beyond the ethical into a more political arena? Antonia Macaro Again, it’s a difficult one. Definitely there’s a tension in both traditions between detachment and action. The Stoics did have an ‘action streak’, as it were, which was about fulfilling your duties and doing what you could, given the circumstances you were in. But yes, it is definitely a tension and maybe this is the sense in which maybe I’m a bit more of an Aristotelian. I think in the end it’s the Serenity Prayer, which is about having the courage to change things that you can change and the serenity to accept the ones that you can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference, which is actually very hard to do. But I think it’s certainly worth trying to change things in the world that you think is possible to change, maybe sometimes even if you don’t think it’s possible to change. Some things may be worth fighting for anyway. It’s a question of finding a balance between that and not getting too attached to things. I suspect that that balance may be a personal, individual choice.

Hedgehog & Fox One point you make a number of times in the book is that our understanding of the mind and the brain, our processes, what’s actually going on beneath the surface, our understanding of that has changed radically. Not just from two-and-a-half thousand years ago but in the last ten years, five years. How recuperable do you think therefore the kind of wisdom traditions are within a framework where we have a very different understanding from they did of how the human mind works? Antonia Macaro Yes, that’s quite a difficult one because especially the Stoics put a lot of emphasis on only thing we can control being our moral choice. Hedgehog & Fox And rationality is well to the fore, isn’t it? Antonia Macaro Yes, yes, exactly. So I certainly think they were wrong in that, in the sense that we are told that a lot of our functioning is unconscious and that we don’t even know our motivation very well; sometimes we act thinking that we are acting for one reason and in fact we’re acting for a completely different reason. There are a lot of studies in social psychology that show that. So I certainly think we shouldn’t overemphasize those abilities because we need to be aware of the fact that we don’t really understand ourselves. But on the other hand, they are good aims to have, to be rational. That is a very good aim to have. It’s true that we have probably more choice on our reactions to things and the way we act than on actual things that happen in the world. So in that sense I think they were correct. So it’s good to remind ourselves of that, because we do get very worked up about how things go for us in the world and a lot of the time it’s good to remind ourselves that we don’t have any control on on that, so focusing more on our reaction. I think it’s good as an inspiration and as a kind of ideal, but not in that extreme way that they were they were saying.

Hedgehog & Fox In your final chapter you distil some of the wisdom which you think is applicable in a secular context. How did you go about doing that? Were the things you ended up with things which you have personally found useful in those traditions? Antonia Macaro Yes, I think I just approached it in that way, just looking at things that I found useful. We haven’t talked yet about the ideal of equanimity, which was quite important for both of them, although it was tempered by compassion, there is a bit of a tension between equanimity and compassion in both traditions. But equanimity is an important ideal and I personally don’t think that pure equanimity is a realistic goal. I’m not entirely sure it would be a really good goal, because it would mean in a way that we’re too detached from certain things that give life meaning, like personal relationships and other things. But I think we can certainly do with a bit more equanimity, so some of the things that I have there are things that maybe aim to put things in perspective. That’s an important thing to do, although I am a bit suspicious of chasing states of mind because they come and go. And I don’t think that they’re the things that really matter. But yes, we could be a little bit more detached and a little bit more tranquil and that would be a good thing. So some of the things I have in there probably have that aim. And there are some thoughts about how to deal with with people, which again is an interesting one because for the Stoics, for example, you had to be realistic about what you were going to encounter in your daily life and people can be very annoying. So there are quite a lot of really nice quotations about that. But at the same time there is the thing of being compassionate and understanding that everybody has flaws and trying to understand that people act badly because they don’t understand things and that’s the same for us and it’s the same for everybody else. So there’s a lot about trying to be compassionate.

Hedgehog & Fox Because certain of the ancient writers you quote, if you were to apply them strictly, the level of radical detachment would be quite hard core. You quote Bernard Williams calling Stoicism ‘lethal high-mindedness’. It would be quite a strong prescription, wouldn’t it, hardcore Stoicism? Antonia Macaro I think a lot of people who consider themselves Stoics probably aren’t quite. Obviously people do adapt it in modern life, but I’m not sure that they’d even be considered Stoics. I can’t remember the exact quotation but Epictetus does say that a lot of his students, a lot of the people studying Stoicism, if they really examined themselves would find that they are maybe Aristotelians or Epicureans, but not really Stoics, because Stoicism is very, very extreme and I don’t think that many people really live like that. I personally don’t think that it would be necessarily a good thing to be that extreme, so it’s always a modified Stoicism that I advocate. Hedgehog & Fox And maybe even the Stoics were modified Stoics. I did smile when Epictetus was suggesting you shouldn’t have more than you need to eat, and you shouldn’t have a bigger house than you need, and you shouldn’t have more slaves than you need! And then you’ve got Seneca, a very wealthy man wrestling and not quite resolving his problems [with wealth], and I thought maybe there’s a little difficulty there even with the early practitioners of Stoicism applying it rigidly. Antonia Macaro Yes, I definitely think that’s true; maybe some more than others. I don’t really know what Epictetus was like in his daily life. He’s certainly quite extreme in what he says. In fact, if you read Seneca’s letters, there are some things that are more Epicurean than than Stoic. So he was a much more rounded individual and had, as you say, his fair share of dilemmas about how attached he should be to wealth and material comforts.

Hedgehog & Fox Tell me about your title, More than Happiness, because the casual observer might think you are aiming at some greater state of bliss. But tell me what in fact you’re pointing to there. Antonia Macaro It’s about what I just said really, that when we look at the wisdom of these traditions, we shouldn’t really aim just at happiness, we shouldn’t focus on happiness all the time anyway. Hedgehog & Fox Because we miss it because it’s a byproduct rather than a target. Antonia Macaro Yes, for a start it’s counterproductive; it raises our expectations about what things should be like in the world and they’re not going to be like that. So the higher our expectations, in a way, the less happy we’ll be, so it’s not a good thing to aim for. And also it’s quite self-centred, just thinking about being happier; we should think more about how we are in the world and how we act towards other people and so on.

Both traditions say that the real joy that we can get isn’t from things going well in the world, because that’s quite unreliable; it’s from things like thinking clearly about things, accepting things the way they really are, and acting ethically. Doing the right things. That is the way to be happier, not relying on the world giving us what we want, because a lot of the time it doesn’t.

Meaning of life?Love and meaningful work.What makes work meaningful?When you apply your unique abilities to something you regard as worthwhile – especially if you know that no one else would have done it in quite the same way.Wait. Can I have 40 more years to work on my answer?

What do you do in your spare time?Hang out with family, walk and hike, play piano, read speculative fiction and popular non-fiction (esp. history, psychology, technology, and cosmology).

the most important secret in magic is that most people believe there’s a safe somewhere that contains all the magic secrets that’s heavily guarded and carefully locked. The biggest secret magicians have to keep is that that safe is empty.

In Tim’s Vermeer, our friend Tim Jenison believes that he has discovered the method by which Vermeer got such photo-realistic effects. Knowing that does not in any way diminish my astonishment at looking at a Vermeer painting. Alexander Pope wrote, “A little learning is a dangerous thing/ drink deep, or not taste the Pierian spring.” He’s talking about exactly that. A little learning can spoil magic. A lot of learning enhances it.

Magicians get into magic because they’re seduced by the feeling of amazement. The ironic thing is, the deeper they dive into magic, the less often they get fooled. That seems immeasurably cruel.The deeper you get into magic, the more profound your amazement becomes. There’s an intermediary stage where you go, “Oh, is that all there is? It was just a thread?” And then when you work with a thread for four years, and you work out what must exactly be done to make that thread into something that is profound and difficult to imagine could be the cause of whatever it is you’re doing to it, you veer right into a different kind of amazement. It’s the amazement of the knowledgeable person. It’s the amazement of the astronomer who has studied everything about the stars that is available, and who sees and understands the mechanisms that we know about, but is able to appreciate how mysterious it all is in the larger picture.

Simplicity is a state of mind. It dwells in the main intention of our lives. A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is, honestly and naturally human. And this is neither so easy nor so impossible as one might think. At bottom, it consists in putting our acts and aspirations in accordance with the law of our being, and consequently with the Eternal Intention which willed that we should be at all. Let a flower be a flower, a swallow a swallow, a rock a rock, and let a man be a man, and not a fox, a hare, a hog, or a bird of prey: this is the sum of the whole matter.

I despair of ever describing simplicity in any worthy fashion. All the strength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, everything that consoles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our dark paths, everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendid goal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity, those who have made another object of their desires than the passing satisfaction of selfishness and vanity, and have understood that the art of living is to know how to give one’s life.

Herein is summed up the experience of humanity, and this experience, which each man must remake for himself, is more precious in proportion as it costs more dear. Illumined by its light, he makes a moral advance more and more sure. Now he has his means of orientation, his internal norm to which he may lead everything back; and from the vacillating, confused, and complex being that he was, he becomes simple. By the ceaseless influence of this same law, which expands within him, and is day by day verified in fact, his opinions and habits become transformed . . . The necessary hierarchy of powers is organized within him: the essential commands, the secondary obeys, and order is born of simplicity. We may compare this organization of the interior life to that of an army. An army is strong by its discipline, and its discipline consists in respect of the inferior for the superior, and the concentration of all its energies toward a single end: discipline once relaxed, the army suffers. It will not do to let the corporal command the general. Examine carefully your life and the lives of others. Whenever something halts or jars, and complications and disorder follow, it is because the corporal has issued orders to the general. Where the natural law rules in the heart, disorder vanishes.

Need we say that one does not rise to this point of view without a struggle? The spirit of simplicity is not an inherited gift, but the result of a laborious conquest . . . But by dint of action, and exacting from himself strict account of his deeds, man arrives at a better knowledge of life. Its law appears to him, and the law is this: Work out your mission. He who applies himself to aught else than the realization of this end, loses in living the raison d’etre of life. The egoist does so, the pleasure-seeker, the ambitious: he consumes existence as one eating the full corn in the blade — he prevents it from bearing its fruit; his life is lost. Whoever, on the contrary, makes his life serve a good higher than itself, saves it in giving it. Moral precepts, which to a superficial view appear arbitrary, and seem made to spoil our zest for life, have really but one object — to preserve us from the evil of having lived in vain. That is why they are constantly leading us back into the same paths; that is why they all have the same meaning: Do not waste your life, make it bear fruit; learn how to give it, in order that it may not consume itself!

Art is the realization of a permanent idea in an ephemeral form. True life is the realization of the higher virtues — justice, love, truth, liberty, moral power — in our daily activities, whatever they may be. And this life is possible in social conditions the most diverse, and with natural gifts the most unequal. It is not fortune or personal advantage, but our turning them to account, that constitutes the value of life. Fame adds no more than does length of days: quality is the thing.

confounding the secondary with the essential, substance with form. They are tempted to believe that simplicity presents certain external characteristics by which it may be recognized, and in which it really consists. Simplicity and lowly station, plain dress, a modest dwelling, slender means, poverty — these things seem to go together. Nevertheless, this is not the case . . . No class has the prerogative of simplicity; no dress, however humble in appearance, is its unfailing badge. Its dwelling need not be a garret, a hut, the cell of the ascetic nor the lowliest fisherman’s bark. Under all the forms in which life vests itself, in all social positions, at the top as at the bottom of the ladder, there are people who live simply, and others who do not.

At no epoch have the exterior conditions which man has made for himself by his industry or his knowledge, been able to exempt him from care for the state of his inner life. The face of the world alters around us, its intellectual and material factors vary; and no one can arrest these changes, whose suddenness is sometimes not short of perilous. But the important thing is that at the center of shifting circumstance man should remain man, live his life, make toward his goal. And whatever be his road, to make toward his goal, the traveler must not lose himself in crossways, nor hamper his movements with useless burdens. Let him heed well his direction and forces, and keep good faith; and that he may the better devote himself to the essential — which is to progress — at whatever sacrifice, let him simplify his baggage.

We must search out, set free, restore to honor the true life, assign things to their proper places, and remember that the center of human progress is moral growth. What is a good lamp? It is not the most elaborate, the finest wrought, that of the most precious metal. A good lamp is a lamp that gives good light. And so also we are men and citizens, not by reason of the number of our goods and the pleasures we procure for ourselves, not through our intellectual and artistic culture, nor because of the honors and independence we enjoy; but by virtue of the strength of our moral fiber. And this is not a truth of today but a truth of all times.

we have in abundance that which, if must be, we can go without, and are infinitely poor in the one thing needful.

When one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and complicate our life, by whatever names they are designated, and their list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which is this: the confusion of the secondary with the essential.

What really matters is . . . what really matters.There are lots of reasons why people aren’t doing what they want to do. For one thing, many of us don’t know what that is. When I was still in real estate, I met with a career counselor. The counselor said, “Why don’t you take a year off and figure out what you really want to do?” The suggestion was mind-boggling. My schedule wouldn’t let me take a day off – let alone a year! But that suggestion, as crazy as it sounded at first, forced me to ask basic questions about my professional life. In fact, I did spend a year away from my job. And if I hadn’t taken that time, I would have been in real estate forever.If you’ve spent years not knowing what you want to do – in your career, in your family life, with your civic obligations – it can seem like an impossible challenge to figure it out. For many people, it’s easier to keep doing what they know they don’t want to do, or what they don’t mind doing. Simplifying your life frees up time for you to figure out what really matters.

We refer to a way of life

ಅನಾದಿಯಾಗಿ ಪಶು ಪಾಶ ಮಲ ಮಯಾಕರ್ಮಗಳುಂಟಾದರೆ,ಈ ಜಗವನೊಬ್ಬರೂ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಮಾಡಿದ ಕರ್ತುವಲ್ಲ.ಎಂದೆಂದೂ ಜಗವಿದ್ದಿತ್ತು ನಿತ್ಯವೆನ್ನು.ಎಂದೆಂದೂ ಜಗವಿದ್ದಿತ್ತೆಂಬೆಯಾದರೆ,ಶಿವನ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿ, ಸ್ಥಿತಿ, ಸಂಹಾರ, ಸ್ಥಿರೋಭಾವ, ಅನುಗ್ರಹವೆಂಬಪಂಚಕೃತ್ಯಗಳು ಹುಸಿಯೆಂದೆನ್ನು.ಶಿವನಿಗೆ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿ ಸ್ಥಿತಿ ಸಂಹಾರಾರ್ಥವುಂಟಾದರೆ,ಈ ಜಗತ್ತೆಲ್ಲವೂ ಶಿವನ ನೆನಹು ಮಾತ್ರದಿಂದ ಹುಟ್ಟಿತ್ತಲ್ಲದೆ,ಎಂದೆಂದೂ ಉಂಟೆಂಬುದು ಶೈವ ಪಶುಮತವಲ್ಲದೆ,ವೀರಶೈವರ ಮತವಲ್ಲ.ವೀರಶೈವರ ಮತವೆಂತೆಂದಡೆ:ಘನ ಗಂಬ್ಥೀರ ವಾರಿದ್ಥಿಯೊಳಗೆ ಫೇನತರಂಗಬುದ್ಬುದ ಶೀಕರಾದಿಗಳು ತೋರಿದಡೆ,ಆ ಸಾಗರ ಹೊರಗಾಗಿ ತೋರಬಲ್ಲವೇ?ಆ ಪರಶಿವಸಾಗರದಲ್ಲಿ ತೃಣಾದಿ ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾಂತವಾದ ದೇಹಿಗಳುಉತ್ಪತ್ತಿಯಾಗಿ ಮತ್ತಲ್ಲಿಯೇ ಅಡಗುತ್ತಿಪ್ಪರು ನೋಡಾ.ಇದು ಕಾರಣ, ಲಿಂಗನಿರ್ಮಿತದಿಂದ ಜಗತ್ತಾಯಿತೆಂದೆ ಕಾಣಾ,ಮಹಾಲಿಂಗಗುರು ಶಿವಸಿದ್ಧೇಶ್ವರ ಪ್ರಭುವೇ.

we are a part of that nature we seek to understan

we are a part of that nature we seek to understan

Know ye that by “the world” is meant your unawareness of Him Who is your Maker, and your absorption in aught else but Him. The “life to come,” on the other hand, signifieth the things that give you a safe approach to God, the All-Glorious, the Incomparable.

handbag

Finally, after 11 years of lukewarm comfort and mediocre job security, I decided to take a chance in trying out in art, which I had always loved. From one point of view, I’ve succeeded, because I am making a living doing this. But even if I didn’t, the bottom line is that at least I have tried. If we try really hard and things don’t work out the way we want them to, we can move on.  I moved with two suitcases to New York from Tokyo and started over with my life. I enrolled myself as a freshman in my 30s, among my 17 and 18-year-old classmates, at School of Visual Arts, started studying art for the first time. Four years later, I received an MFA in Illustration, then started slowly working as a freelance illustrator

They have wretched health, as you have heard us say frequently, and are subject to a variety of very serious disorders. Indeed, I do not believe they know what a day's health is.

ಅನಾದಿಯಾಗಿ ಪಶು ಪಾಶ ಮಲ ಮಯಾಕರ್ಮಗಳುಂಟಾದರೆ,ಈ ಜಗವನೊಬ್ಬರೂ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಮಾಡಿದ ಕರ್ತುವಲ್ಲ.ಎಂದೆಂದೂ ಜಗವಿದ್ದಿತ್ತು ನಿತ್ಯವೆನ್ನು.ಎಂದೆಂದೂ ಜಗವಿದ್ದಿತ್ತೆಂಬೆಯಾದರೆ,ಶಿವನ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿ, ಸ್ಥಿತಿ, ಸಂಹಾರ, ಸ್ಥಿರೋಭಾವ, ಅನುಗ್ರಹವೆಂಬಪಂಚಕೃತ್ಯಗಳು ಹುಸಿಯೆಂದೆನ್ನು.ಶಿವನಿಗೆ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿ ಸ್ಥಿತಿ ಸಂಹಾರಾರ್ಥವುಂಟಾದರೆ,ಈ ಜಗತ್ತೆಲ್ಲವೂ ಶಿವನ ನೆನಹು ಮಾತ್ರದಿಂದ ಹುಟ್ಟಿತ್ತಲ್ಲದೆ,ಎಂದೆಂದೂ ಉಂಟೆಂಬುದು ಶೈವ ಪಶುಮತವಲ್ಲದೆ,ವೀರಶೈವರ ಮತವಲ್ಲ.ವೀರಶೈವರ ಮತವೆಂತೆಂದಡೆ:ಘನ ಗಂಬ್ಥೀರ ವಾರಿದ್ಥಿಯೊಳಗೆ ಫೇನತರಂಗಬುದ್ಬುದ ಶೀಕರಾದಿಗಳು ತೋರಿದಡೆ,ಆ ಸಾಗರ ಹೊರಗಾಗಿ ತೋರಬಲ್ಲವೇ?ಆ ಪರಶಿವಸಾಗರದಲ್ಲಿ ತೃಣಾದಿ ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾಂತವಾದ ದೇಹಿಗಳುಉತ್ಪತ್ತಿಯಾಗಿ ಮತ್ತಲ್ಲಿಯೇ ಅಡಗುತ್ತಿಪ್ಪರು ನೋಡಾ.ಇದು ಕಾರಣ, ಲಿಂಗನಿರ್ಮಿತದಿಂದ ಜಗತ್ತಾಯಿತೆಂದೆ ಕಾಣಾ,ಮಹಾಲಿಂಗಗುರು ಶಿವಸಿದ್ಧೇಶ್ವರ ಪ್ರಭುವೇ.

ಅರಿತು ಜನ್ಮವಾದವರಿಲ್ಲ ಸತ್ತು ಮರಳಿ ತೋರುವರಿಲ್ಲ.ದುರಭಿಮಾನವ ಹೊತ್ತು ಅಘಟಿತ ಘಟಿತವ ನುಡಿವಿರಿ.ಈ ದೇಹವಿಡಿದು ನುಡಿವ ಪ್ರಪಂಚಿಗಳನೇನೆಂಬೆ ಗುಹೇಶ್ವರಾ.

ಅನ್ಯದೈವ ಭವಿನಾಸ್ತಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ, ಪಾದತೀರ್ಥಪ್ರಸಾದವಿಲ್ಲದೆ ಬಾಯಿದೆರೆದಲ್ಲಿ, ಲಿಂಗಕ್ಕೆ ಕೊಡದೆ ಕೊಂಡಲ್ಲಿ, ಆ ವ್ರತಕ್ಕೆ ಆಚಾರವೆ ಪ್ರಾಣವಾಗಿರ್ಪ ರಾಮೇಶ್ವರಲಿಂಗ ದೂರಸ್ಥನಾಗಿಪ್ಪನು

This was a time when I was starting to think about what my career was going to be. I’d failed to make it as a musician. I’d had lots of appointments with A&R people. After two seconds, they’d say, It’s not going to happen, man. So I thought I’d have a go at a radio play.  Then, almost by accident, I came across a little advertisement for a creative-writing M.A. taught by Malcolm Bradbury at the University of East Anglia. Today it’s a famous course, but in those days it was a laughable idea, alarmingly American. I discovered subsequently that it hadn’t run the previous year because not enough people had applied. Somebody told me Ian McEwan had done it a decade before. I thought he was the most exciting young writer around at that point. But the primary attraction was that I could go back to university for a year, fully funded by the government, and at the end I would only have to submit a thirty-page work of fiction. I sent the radio play to Malcolm Bradbury along with my application.  I was slightly taken aback when I was accepted, because it suddenly became real. I thought, these writers are going to scrutinize my work and it’s going to be humiliating. Somebody told me about a cottage for rent in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall that had previously been used as a rehabilitation place for drug addicts. I called up and said, I need a place for one month because I’ve got to teach myself to write. And that’s what I did that summer of 1979. It was the first time I really thought about the structure of a short story. I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on. At the end I had two stories to show, so I felt more secure.

If you haven't experienced the glory of wool, get this shirt. I wear it every day for at least two to three weeks before washing it, stains magically disappear (I've already spilled chocolate on this one, haven't washed it yet, and there's no sign), doesn't ever smell bad, dries quickly, etc. Honestly, wearing cotton strikes me as a bit barbaric.

I've been more or less a nomad since 2008, and was one of the very first to really travel in a minimalist (one small backpack) way. I'm sure others came before me (and my friend Todd), but none I'm aware of who were writing about it.

Engelbart's career was inspired in December 1950 when he was engaged to be married and realized he had no career goals other than "a steady job, getting married and living happily ever after".[14] Over several months he reasoned that: he would focus his career on making the world a better place[15] any serious effort to make the world better would require some kind of organized effort that harnessed the collective human intellect of all people to contribute to effective solutions. if you could dramatically improve how we do that, you'd be boosting every effort on the planet to solve important problems – the sooner the better computers could be the vehicle for dramatically improving this capability.[14]

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral;

WHERE TO FIND FLOWFlow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses. It is easy to enter flow in games such as chess, tennis, or poker, because they have goals and rules that make it possible for the player to act without questioning what should be done, and how. For the duration of the game the player lives in a self-contained universe where everything is black and white. The same clarity of goals is present if you perform a religious ritual, play a musical piece, weave a rug, write a computer program, climb a mountain, or perform surgery. In contrast to normal life, these "flow activities" allow a person to focus on goals that are clear and compatible, and provide immediate feedback.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1404853927369-9'); });Flow also happens when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. If challenges are too low, one gets back to flow by increasing them. If challenges are too great, one can return to the flow state by learning new skills.How often do people experience flow? If you ask a sample of typical Americans, "Do you ever get involved in something so deeply that nothing else seems to matter and you lose track of time?" roughly one in five will say that this happens to them as much as several times a day, whereas about 15 percent will say that this never happens to them. These frequencies seem to he quite stable and universal. For instance, in a recent survey of 6,469 Germans, the same question was answered in the following way: Often, 23 percent; Sometimes, 40 percent; Rarely, 25 percent; Never or Don't Know, 12 percent.A more precise way to study flow is the Experience Sampling Method, or ESM, which I developed at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. This method provides a virtual filmstrip of a person's daily activities and experiences. At the signal of a pager or watch, which goes off at random times within each two-hour segment of the day, a person writes down in a booklet where she is, what she is doing, what she is thinking about, and whom she is with, then she rates her state of consciousness on various numerical scales. At our Chicago laboratory, we have collected over the years a total of 70,000 pages from about 2,300 respondents. Investigators in other parts of the world have more than tripled these figures.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1456244145486-0'); });The ESM has found that flow generally occurs when a person is doing his or her favorite activity--gardening, listening to music, bowling, cooking a good meal. It also occurs when driving, talking to friends, and surprisingly often at work. Very rarely do people report flow in passive leisure activities, such as watching television or relaxing.Almost any activity can produce flow provided the relevant elements are present, so it is possible to improve the quality of life by making sure that the conditions of flow are a constant part of everyday life.FLOW AT WORKAlthough adults tend to be less happy than average while working, and their motivation is considerably below normal, ESM studies find more occasions of flow on the job than in free time. This finding is not that surprising: Work is much more like a game than most other things we do during the day. It usually has clear goals and rules of performance. It provides feedback either in the form of knowing that one has finished a job well done, in terms of measurable sales or through an evaluation by one's supervisor. A job tends to encourage concentration and prevent distractions, and ideally, its difficulties match the worker's skills.Nevertheless, if we had the chance most of us would like to work less. One reason is the historical disrepute of work, which each of us learn as we grow up.Yet we can't blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are few options when we realize that our job is useless or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one's life, it is always better to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult and require great honesty with oneself.article continues after advertisementgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1468856734952-0'); });Short of making such a dramatic switch, there are many ways to make one's job produce flow. A supermarket clerk who pays genuine attention to customers, a physician concerned about the total well-being of patients, or a news reporter who considers truth at least as important as sensational interest when writing a story, can transform a routine job into one that makes a difference. Turning a dull jot into one that satisfies our need for novelty and achievement involves paying close attention to each step involved, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Can it be done better, faster, more efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? If, instead of spending a lot of effort trying to cut corners, one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would enjoy working--more and probably be more successful. When approached without too many cultural prejudices and with a determination to make it personally meaningful, even the most mundane job can produce flow.The same type of approach is needed for solving the problem of stress at work. First, establish priorities among the demands that crowd into consciousness. Successful people often make lists or flowcharts of all the things they have to do, and quickly decide which tasks they can delegate or forget, and which ones they have to tackle personally, and in what order. The next step is to match one's skills with whatever challenges have been identified. There will be tasks we feel incompetent to deal with. Can you learn the skills required in time? Can you get help? Can the task be transformed, or broken into simpler parts? Usually the answer to one of these questions will provide a solution;that transforms a potentially stressful situation into a flow experience.

But it’s the second part of that definition that has proven the most helpful for me: ‘recognising that one’s own experience is part of the common human experience’. It’s the idea of taking a zoomed-out look at yourself, and realising that you are more similar to others than you are different, even (maybe especially) considering how ridiculous you often are. As Neff herself said in an interview with The Atlantic in 2016: ‘[W]hen we fail, it’s not “poor me,” it’s “well, everyone fails.” Everyone struggles. This is what it means to be human.’In fact, it’s this part of the definition of self-compassion that makes me question whether it should be called self-compassion at all. Neff’s concept isn’t really about adoring yourself, or not entirely, anyway; this piece of it isn’t actually about you. Rather, it’s about the importance of recalling that you are but one small part of an interconnected whole.

“Almost any situation gets better when you ask yourself this: How can I be most useful right now? — Most useful to your employer, to your client, to the people you care for in your personal life, even to your future self. Asking ‘How can I be most useful right now?’ will get you past too little ambition, past too much ambition, past many interpersonal conflicts, boredom, frustration, and creative block. Sometimes the answer is ‘I can be most useful to everybody — including me — by leaving,’ but usually it’ll lead you to creating better work!”

“What did I know? I knew that relationships were critical in design. I knew that hard work was required. I knew that I needed inspiration beyond graphic design. “What did I not know? I didn’t know that time is forgiving. Saul Bass told me that success is defined by a series of successful projects over an extended period of time. I didn’t listen. I was convinced that every project was my last chance to succeed. Alternatively, each failure signaled the end of my career. Saul was right. Some projects were as ugly as something the cat coughed up, but the next one was better. And some projects were incredibly successful, and then the next one came along and it was left behind. The world isn’t black and white.”

“There’s a lyric from the song, Ooh La La by The Faces that says, ‘I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.’ I think of this any time someone asks me what advice I would give young people just starting out. On the one hand, there are a thousand things that I’ve learned over the years that would have made my early professional life easier; things I know now. On the other hand, the great joy of life is learning and growing and making one’s own mistakes. I’d feel robbed if— when I was younger— someone had taken that away from me. “So my advice is to remember that success is a map of failures; Explore with courage. Draw the contours with grace.”

“Make sure to balance work and life. Without balance you may experience early career burn out or create undue emotional strain on yourself and the ones you love. “Connect with nature. Get out of your head and into your body. Nature reminds us to listen, think, and feel in ways that feed our intuition. “Travel. It enriches your life on every level. But there’s more to it because it takes us out of the context of what we know. It challenges us to exercise muscles that we don’t normally use. “There’s so much to learn from immersion in the unfamiliar. The benefit is a heightened sense of empathy and compassion — along with a sprinkling of humility. Chance invites spontaneity and play, which fuel creativity. Being open to chance — wherever you are — is a fearless act.”

When the patient is unwilling or unable to make medical decisions, the health care proxy is activated and he or she is obligated to make all health choices on behalf of the patient. These may be related to withdrawing or withholding life support, instituting artificial liquid feeding, attempting resuscitation and even whether or not to participate in autopsy and organ donation.

Most of us will lose our ability to make medical decisions for ourselves in the last phase of our lives

I reconnected with the EuroCALL community finding Graham Davies online (sadly now passed away but not before he agreed to deliver some staff training through his Second Life presence, a real highlight for me) and this inspired

Se constituye de galaxias, de astros, de soles, dicho de otro modo, se desarrolla mediante la organización al mismo tiempo que se produce mediante la desorganización. El mundo biológico es un mundo que evoluciona

Toxoplasmosis is caused by the obligate intracellular parasite, Toxoplasma gondii. Its life cycle consists of 3 forms, including an oocyst, a tissue cyst, and an active (proliferative) form.

DHers peer with microscopes and macroscopes, looking into things we cannot see. And even while we delight in building the shiny and the new—and come to meetings like this to celebrate and share and advance that work—we know that someone, sooner or later, curates bits against our ruins.1

ven Christians and Jews shared these practices and enforced them.6

short elimination half‐life of roughly 2 h and negligible renal clearance

‘I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.’

but I feel like I’m just getting started on the long road ahead of me.

The point of political protest is to change the world. And yet the process matters, too.

To live in the present is not to avoid hard work or strife. Alongside the projects that occupy you in your profession, or in your political life, the telic activities that matter to you, is the atelic process of protesting injustice or doing your job. To value the process is not to flee from work or political engagement. That is why living in the present is not an abdication of ethical responsibility or a recipe for detachment.

To live in the present is not to deny the value of telic activities, of making a difference in the world. That would be a terrible mistake. Nor can we avoid engaging in such activities. But if projects are all we value, our lives become self-subversive, aimed at extinguishing the sources of meaning within them. To live in the present is to refuse the excessive investment in projects, in achievements and results, that sees no inherent value in the process.

To live in the present is to appreciate the value of atelic activities like going for a walk, listening to music, spending time with family or friends. To engage in these activities is not to extinguish them from your life. Their value is not mortgaged to the future or consigned to the past, but realized here and now. It is to care about the process of what you are doing, not just projects you aim to complete.

“If you are learning, you have not at the same time learned.” When you care about telic activities, projects such as writing a report, getting married or making dinner, satisfaction is always in the future or the past. It is yet to be achieved and then it is gone. Telic activities are exhaustible; in fact, they aim at their own exhaustion. They thus exhibit a peculiar self-subversion. In valuing and so pursuing these activities, we aim to complete them, and so to expel them from our lives.

Atelic activities, by contrast, do not by nature come to an end and are not incomplete. In defining such activities, we could emphasize their inexhaustibility, the fact that they do not aim at terminal states. But we could also emphasize what Aristotle does: They are fully realized in the present. “At the same time, one is seeing and has seen, is understanding and has understood, is thinking and has thought.” There is nothing you need to do in order to perform an atelic activity except what you are doing right now. If what you care about is reflecting on your life or spending time with family or friends, and that is what you are doing, you are not on the way to achieving your end: You are already there.

One of the main spots the large rays frequent is around a set of stairs that descend into the ocean. It’s where local fishermen toss back any unwanted fish and so the area has become a harbor hot spot where many sea creatures stop by hoping to find an easy meal.

Hedgehogs, however, are slow and steady, and people often overlook them because they're quiet and unassuming. But, unlike the fox, they are able to simplify the world and focus on one overarching vision. It's this principle that guides everything they do, and helps them succeed against all odds.

But knowing what your ikigai is not enough – all of these people put their purpose into action, says Buettner. Researchers stress that ikigai can change with age. For anyone whose work is their reason for living, this will come as a relief as they approach retirement and begin the search for a new ikigai.

Matthews says that ikigai will likely lead to a better life “because you will have something to live for”, but warns against viewing ikigai as a lifestyle choice: “Ikigai is not something grand or extraordinary. It’s something pretty matter-of-fact.”

Deep in the Pacific Ocean, scientists may have discovered a ghostly new species of snailfish. Snailfish are the deepest dwelling vertebrates on Earth. Some live over 5 miles below the surface. This one was observed at a depth of 1.5 miles, in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. It’s possible this is the first time it’s ever been observed by humans.

it can realize an open connection with the outside world

I don’t want to be one of the melancholics or those who become sour and bitter and morbid. To understand all is to forgive all,18 and I believe that if we knew everything we’d arrive at a certain serenity. Now having this serenity as much as possible, even when one knows — little — nothing — for certain, is perhaps a better remedy against all ills than what’s sold in the chemist’s. A lot comes of its own accord, one grows and develops of one’s own accord.

And above all I find it a very worrying matter that you believe you have to study in order to write. No, my dear little sister, learn to dance or fall in love with one or more notary’s clerks, officers, in short whoever’s within your reach; rather, much rather commit any number of follies than study in Holland, it serves absolutely no purpose other than to make someone dull, and so I won’t hear of it. For my part, I still continually have the most impossible and highly unsuitable love affairs from which, as a rule, I emerge only with shame and disgrace.13 And in this I’m absolutely right, in my own view, because I tell myself that in earlier years, when I should have been in love, I immersed myself in religious and socialist affairs and considered art more sacred, more than now. Why are religion or law or art so sacred? People who do nothing other than be in love are perhaps more serious and holier than those who sacrifice their love and their heart to an idea. Be this as it may, to write a book, to perform a deed, to make a painting with life in it, one must be a living person oneself. And so for you, unless you never want to progress, studying is very much a side issue. Enjoy yourself as much as you can and have as many distractions as you can, and be aware that what people want in art nowadays has to be very lively, with strong colour, very intense. So intensify your own health and strength and life a little, that’s the best study.

life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness:

graduating seniors might do well to remember that winning high school isn’t everything. And for those who want to change the world, a perfect GPA is not a prerequisite.

A series of energy revolutions—some natural, some technological—built upon one another to give us our rich, diverse biosphere.

sift ye as wheat

I am older than most of you. I don’t have time for this if it’s just another System B in disguise.

I am still an outsider running an underground railway and I am needing folks to guide me: is this connectedcourses System A or a well-disguised System B.

I am an outsider as many of you are. I came to teaching late after fifteen years of farming and running a couple of businesses (taxes and chimney sweeping). I came to teaching through substitute teaching. WTF.

System A is all about integrity and health and the folk not as nodes in a machine, but as a growing, adapting, distributed and living whole. It is the difference between a neighborhood and a housing development.

two minute video which gave him hope.

Survival my friends is a pitiful option.

8 minutes left.

I have fifteen minutes left.

It was all that I could do to put the pieces together on the carpet. I have no memory of whether I finished the puzzle.

a giant jigsaw puzzle.

The key is know that the curse exists.  To be able to recognize the challenge before you.

Many people implicitly or explicitly use this cognitive outsourcing model to think about augmentation. It's commonly used in press accounts, for instance. It is also, I believe, a common way for programmers to think about augmentation. In this essay, we've seen a different way of thinking about augmentation. Rather than just solving problems expressed in terms we already understand, the goal is to change the thoughts we can think:

people live in their minds and not in life. This is the source of all of your difficulties. You are more engaged with your ideas than you are with life. Being engaged with life means that you are directly involved and are having a direct experience.

Today, Ralph Carr is remembered as someone who stood up for the rights of others, even when his view was not popular. He has been memorialized in a statue in Denver’s Sakura Square and in the naming of the Ralph Carr Memorial Highway and the new Ralph Carr Judicial Center in downtown Denver. In 1999, the Denver Post named him Colorado’s “Citizen of the Century.”

In 1938, Ralph decided to run for Governor of Colorado and won.2“Meet Colorado’s New Governor, Ralph Carr.” Steamboat Pilot, December 8, 1938. CHNC Three years later the United States entered World War II when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. After the attack, many Americans began to distrust Japanese Americans, even those who were United States citizens, fearing that they might be spies. Because of this, the United States government forced thousands of Japanese Americans, mostly from California, to leave their homes and live in “internment camps.” However, unlike many others, Ralph Carr believed in Japanese Americans’ loyalty,3“Japanese Citizens of Routt County Loyal To America.” Steamboat Pilot, December 25, 1941. CHNC and he did not send Japanese Coloradans to the camps. He believed that the Constitution protected all Americans.

Ralph married Eleanor Fairall.

In 1929, he was appointed by President Herbert Hoover to serve as U.S. Attorney for Colorado

Ralph went on to study law, earning his law degree in 1912. His law practice took him to the town of Antonito in southern Colorado.

People who are deaf-blind have marketable skills and strategies to compete and succeed in the workplace.

In May of 1888, Sullivan brought Keller to Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, where a new world of friendship began: “I joined the little blind children in their work and play, and talked continually. I was delighted to find that nearly all of my new friends could spell with their fingers. Oh, what happiness! To talk freely with other children! To feel at home in the great world!

Diego Rivera was born in December of 1886 and first began creating art and murals at the age of three after the death of his twin brother. Young Diego's parents caught him drawing on the walls of their home but rather than punish him for it they instead nurtured his growing creativity. They installed canvas and chalkboard on the walls and let Rivera create as he saw fit