Ahmed

“The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering and then to take care of the suffering. The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgement.

So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the child. Even if the mother doesn't understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her acto f taking the child into her arms with tenderness can alreadby bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

“Super Mario Bros. hooks newcomers because there are no barriers to playing the game. You can know absolutely nothing about the Nintendo console and still enjoy yourself from the very first minute. There's no need to read motivation-sapping manuals or grind through educational tutorials before you begin. Instead, your avatar, Mario appears on the left-hand side of an almost empty screen. Because the screen is empty, you can push the Nintendo controller's buttons randomly and harmlessly, learning which ones make Mario jump and which ones make him move left and right. You can't move any further left, so you quickly learn to move right. And you aren't reading a guide that tells you which keys are which--instead, you're learning by doing, and enjoying the sense of mastery comes from acquiring knowledge through experience. The first few seconds of gameplay are brilliantly designed to simultaneously do two very difficult things: teach, and preserve the illusion that nothing is being taught at all.”
― Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

“Fuck what you have heard or what you have seen in your son. He may lie about homework and laugh when the teacher calls home. He may curse his teacher, propose arson for the whole public system. But inside is the same sense that was in me. None of us ever want to fail. None of us want to be unworthy, to not measure up.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

“There may be no advice given to young creative types more often than "Stay hungry." Hunger is encouraged by commencement speakers, noted as a requirement in job listings, looked back on fondly by one-time strivers now on the far side of their golden years. Hunger is everything because its nothing--not yet-- just raw promise, one lack that may eclipse others: talent, pedigree, luck. Like sharks, the hungry must always keep moving, hunting, killing, "killing it." We assure the hungry that they are poised to go far--over and beyond the bodies of the frightened and dull and easily sated. At the end of the day they will stand smiling, jaws bloodied, still wanting more.

When we talk about hunger this way -- as shorthand for a certain noble stripe of ambition--we tend to obscure its roots in our bodies, our biology. Even in this strange sliver of the world where food is ample to the point of thread, hunger remains a real, animal sensation. Every few hours our bodies rumble with discomfort and we are expected to soothe them, whether or not we understand or trust the nature of their want. Perhaps this hunger is honest, or perhaps it's just that you smelled the cookies baking or you got stood up or cut off or side-eyed or just happened to see the clock hit eleven thirty, a time you were hungry before. Hunger confuses the needs of our minds with the needs of our bellies. Hunger lies like a child.

But then, whether or not you give into your hunger, even if you give it nothing at all, it always slinks away; but then, it always returns. It is a fundamental condition. We seem to forget this when we talk about the appetites of the young. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have been drafted into some cannibal army and must devour their own to have any hope of survival. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have any choice at all.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living