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Thursday, June 22, 2017 • Issue 53
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Welcome to the Thursday Three – a (mostly) weekly newsletter of three things to help find meaning in the mundane – just for you in your inbox every Thursday. If you’re reading this and not already subscribed, you can subscribe and view the Thursday Three archive here. If you're a new subscriber, it's good to have you!
 


This was my tweet Tuesday night as I sat waiting for U2 to take the stage at FedEx Field outside Washington, DC. It was my fifth time seeing the band. First in Charlottesville in 2009. Then Baltimore two years later. Twice in Chicago on back-to-back nights in 2015. And then Tuesday.

There's something truly magical about being there in that space with that band and tens of thousands of my closest friends. It's why we go back again and again. I dance. I sing. I shout. I let it all go. I lose every inhibition. I'm free.
 


And I'm alive. Made new. I remember who I am in that thin space.

Perhaps what I love most about these shows is how the Bono can somehow, night after night, unite thousands on thousands – each with different backgrounds and beliefs and stories and journeys, and catch us all up in something higher and wider and deeper and more real than we ever could have dreamed.

“We will find common ground reaching for higher ground,” Bono said on Tuesday night. I believe him.

So that's the inspiration for this week’s Thursday Three. It’s about finding common ground. Living in the gray area. Embracing the paradox. Seeing things differently. Clinging gently. Reaching for higher ground.

Enjoy.


+ The Grays of Our Lives

First up, an article about why gray may be the way – whether in fashion or art or thinking. In this Racked piece, Kyle Chayka describes the draw.

Its appeal is its ambiguity. As a color, gray is paradoxically defined by an absence thereof. Achromatic gray exists on a spectrum of pure white to black. The addition of a small proportion of another hue gives chromatic grays their tinge: the greenish gray of the sky just before a storm or the brownish gray of ceramic clay. Perhaps the most compelling thing about gray is that it’s not composed of absolutes — it exists between them. There might be a bluest blue and a reddest red and even a blackest black, but there is no one grayest gray.

As movements co-opt colors, (see red Make America Great Again caps and pink Women's March hats), Chayka argues that gray may be “a more unifying symbol for our time.”

Gray, as I see it, represents a livable position for a time when the sweep of global events seems to overwhelm the individual. The color is a coping strategy built on cultivated ambivalence; not the lack of a moral compass, but the flexibility to persist in challenging circumstances, to speak louder by choosing when and how to speak. Ultimately, it symbolizes a kind of freedom.

It’s an interesting take. I don’t know that I’m ready to fill my Amazon cart with an assortment of gray gear, but as polarized and certain as we’ve come, living with some gray may not be a bad idea. Click here to read the full article.


+ Invisibilia: Reality Part One

The new season of the Invisibilia podcast is out and, as expected, it’s great. In a series of recent episodes, Hanna and Alix explore the nature of reality and one question in particular: How it is possible for two people to look at the same thing, but see two different realities? 

To explore this question, the production visits Eagle’s Nest Township in Minnesota, a community seeking to answer the age-old question: Are bears dangerous or not? Spoiler alert: Yes. From the episode:

We come from a long tradition handed down from the Greeks that a proposition is either true or false. And if there is a contradiction, one of those propositions must be wrong. This need we have to find the right or the wrong of whatever we’re looking at, that’s just a cultural habit baked into the logic system handed down to us… In Chinese philosophy and in much of East Asian cultures today, the assumption is that if there’s a contradiction, both may be right or both may be wrong, and each side should move toward the middle.

Click here to give it a listen and if you’re intrigued, “Reality Part Two” is about that move to the middle.


+ Today, Like Every Other Day

13th-century mystic, Rumi, brings it home today. These words have been meaningful to me as I’ve sought beauty and humility, common ground and higher ground. A friend this week shared with me a mantra she’s been carrying: “Don’t be above it.” I like it. I like it because it’s hard, after all, to be above anything with our knees on the ground.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Thanks, as always, for reading and subscribing. If you dig what's going on here, consider sharing the Thursday Three on Insta or Snap or whatever you're using these days. Use the buttons below to forward, share on Facebook, or tweet it out. I rely on you to get the word out! Before you go, would you tell me what book you're currently reading? Until next week, let's reach for higher ground.
 
Peace,

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Copyright © 2017 Brent Levy, All rights reserved.


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