G'day! Welcome to this week's digest. This is a very special "Woo Woo" edition, because we get all warm and fuzzy with feelings, relationships, infinite time loops, human fallibility, etc. It is SO not New York City, I know, but I am over it if you are. To help get you in the right mood, I recommend Scorpions' Winds of Change playing in the background ;D

This week's topics include objectively staring down the biggest challenges of the 21st century, embracing our wounds to heal the world, appreciating the gifts of relationships, and 80's comedies that smuggle in important life lessons. Enjoy!


Source: Giphy

• BOOK - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari (My full Kindle notes) - Accepting the fallibility and limitations of the human animal will enable us to improve our individual and group processes to solve the key challenges of the 21st century.
   
• PODCAST - On Being: The Difference Between Fixing and Healing with Rachel Naomi Remen by Krista Tippett - Our imperfect, wounded, authentic self is more than enough to heal the world immediately around us.
   
• BLOG POST - Reboot: The Gifts of Relationship by Ali Schultz - Our intimate relationships offer tremendous opportunities for growth.
   
• MOVIE - Groundhog Day by Harold Ramis - Serving others is one of the easiest (and counter-intuitive) paths to deep joy and meaning.

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• Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including the conditions of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and so even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.
   
• ...[I]f we manage to combine a universal economic safety net with strong communities and meaningful pursuits, losing our jobs to algorithms might actually turn out to be a blessing. Losing control over our lives, however, is a much scarier scenario.
   
• This reliance on the heart might prove to be the Achilles’ heel of liberal democracy. For once somebody (whether in Beijing or in San Francisco) gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show... Once politicians can press our emotional buttons directly, generating anxiety, hatred, joy, and boredom at will, politics will become a mere emotional circus... Given enough biometric data and enough computing power, external data-processing systems can hack all your desires, decisions, and opinions.
   
• ...people live ever more lonely lives in an ever more connected planet. Many of the social and political disruptions of our time can be traced back to this malaise... It is easier than ever to talk to my cousin in Switzerland, but it is harder to talk to my husband over breakfast, because he constantly looks at his smartphone instead of at me.
   
• People still have different religions and national identities. But when it comes to the practical stuff—how to build a state, an economy, a hospital, or a bomb—almost all of us belong to the same civilization.
   
• Yet if you want to go deeply into any subject, you need a lot of time, and in particular you need the privilege of wasting time. You need to experiment with unproductive paths, explore dead ends, make space for doubts and boredom, and allow little seeds of insight to slowly grow and blossom. If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth.
   
• I am aware that many people might be upset by my equating religion with fake news, but that’s exactly the point. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it “fake news” in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath).
   
• Technology isn’t bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don’t know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life... Have you seen those zombies who roam the streets with their faces glued to their smartphones? Do you think they control the technology, or does the technology control them?
   
• Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations... Once personal identities and entire social systems are built on top of a story, it becomes unthinkable to doubt it, not because of the evidence supporting it, but because its collapse will trigger a personal and social cataclysm. In history, the roof is sometimes more important than the foundations.
   
• According to liberal mythology, if you spend a long enough time in that big supermarket [of shared human stories (fictions)], sooner or later you will experience the liberal epiphany and realize the true meaning of life: all the stories on the supermarket shelves are fakes. The meaning of life isn’t a ready-made product. There is no divine script, and nothing outside me can give meaning to my life. It is I who imbue everything with meaning through my free choices and through my own feelings.
   
• When you give up all the fictional stories, you can observe reality with far greater clarity than before, and if you really know the truth about yourself and about the world, nothing can make you miserable. But that is of course much easier said than done.

• We are all healers of the world. And that story opens a sense of possibility. It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It’s about healing the world that touches you, that’s around you... That’s where our power is. Many people feel powerless in today’s situation... I think that we all feel that we’re not enough to make a difference; that we need to be more, somehow, either wealthier or more educated or, somehow or other, different than the people we are. And according to this story, we are exactly what’s needed. And to just wonder about that a little, what if we were exactly what’s needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what’s needed to heal the world?
   
• "How can I make a difference when I’m so wounded, myself? How can I make a difference when I feel so not-enough?” But it’s our very wounds that enable us to make a difference. We are the right people, just as we are.
   
• I think perfection is the booby prize in life, actually. It's very isolating, very separating, and it's also impossible to achieve. So you're always struggling to become something you're not.
   
• What you're leaving behind you in the hearts and minds of other people is far more important than whatever wealth you may have accumulated.
   
• And just asking people that question: “You have suffered a really deep loss. What have you called upon for your strength?” Most people haven't even noticed their strength. They're completely focused on their pain... Wholeness includes all of our wounds. It includes all of our vulnerabilities. It is our authentic self, and it doesn't sit in judgment on our wounds or our vulnerabilities. It simply says, “This is the way we connect to one another.” Often we connect through our wounds, through the wisdom we have gained, the growth that has happened to us. Because we have been wounded allows us to be of help to other people.

• I asked my therapist at the time: “What does an ideal relationship look like?” He took a second to gather his thoughts and replied, “once a commitment is made, the main theme in a healthy relationship should be about personal growth. The fundamental concept also has to do with purpose. If the purpose of partnership is to have the other person make us happy, we are in for a rough ride because they will inevitably disappoint in one way or another. If the purpose of life is the fulfillment of consciousness – and we are intentionally, consciously using partnership as a way to confront and work with our limitations and complex personality structures – ah! – then we have a chance.”
   
• ...the truth of relationship: they are our best chance at conscious growth because they are a mirror for what comes up for us – our shadow and our light, our projections and our assumptions. Being in partnership shows where our (inner) work needs some inner working.
   
• The most successful partnerships are based on a rich bed of trust... It’s a well understood and well-oiled machine of beings in union around the same goal, values, focus. That level of togetherness takes lots of practice and a level of commitment from each individual.
   
• David Richo writes in How to Be an Adult in Relationship that “The commitment to work through problems as they arise is the only sign that we truly want full intimacy.” A large part of that commitment is our willingness to be vulnerable in our work in the presence of another. That level of work can only happen when you feel trust and loving presence.
   
• ...“The Five A’s” and their importance in the practice of being adult in relationship with others and yourself. These are attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing. Together, they are the components of love that make a relationship a truly caring connection.
   
• When I am operating from the mindsets of ego, I leave no space for the person I’m with to feel safe, heard, loved and able to flourish. I leave no space for their heart to show up in full.
   
• What’s possible here is a maturity in relating that can’t be done from a place of insecurity or self-centeredness. If we operate in relationship from this place, then we have no chance of succeeding. When we can embrace what the mirror of relationship reflects back to us, and seize our work as a perpetual practice, we can then receive the greatest gift of encountering each other... and we are obliged to grow larger than we had planned.

• What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?... That about sums it up for me.

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