Cody Lasko

“We feel pressured to do something extraordinary with our lives, or to an extraordinary standard of merit, or in a way that’s applauded by an extraordinary number of people – even though it’s true by definition that only a few people can ever be extraordinary in any given domain. (If we could all stand out from the crowd, there’d be no crowd from which to stand out.) Why shouldn’t an anonymous career spent quietly helping a few people get to qualify as a meaningful way to spend one’s time? Why shouldn’t an absorbing conversation, an act of kindness, or an exhilarating hike get to count? Why adopt a definition that rules such things out?”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

“The only two questions, at any moment of choice in life, is what the price is, and whether or not it’s worth paying.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

“Men destroy each other during war, themselves during peacetime.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“You might easily never have been born, but fate granted you the opportunity to get stuck into the mess you see around you, whatever it is. You are here. This is it. You don’t much matter – yet you matter as much as anyone ever did. The river of time flows inexorably on; amazingly, confoundingly, marvelously, we get the brief chance to go kayaking in it.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts