Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
By Maria Popova
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives.
In accordance with the annual tradition, here is the best of The Marginalian in hindsight — a Venn diagram of what I most loved writing and what readers most loved reading, spanning from the outermost reaches of the universe where physics probes the nature of reality to the innermost regions of being where poems reckon with the truest truths.
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17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian
Read it here.
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The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother
Read it here.
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How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty
Read it here.
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The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter to Life
Read it here.
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The Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence
Read it here.
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The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul
Read it here.
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Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
Read it here.
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Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
Read it here.
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Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians
Read it here.
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How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön
Read it here.
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The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited
Read it here.
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The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love
Read it here.
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Nick Cave on the Art of Growing Older
Read it here.
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The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself
Read it here.
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How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
Read it here.
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Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions
Read it here.
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Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to Be Reborn Each Day
Read it here.
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The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem About the Meaning and Measure of Enough
Read it here.
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Spell Against Indifference
Read it here.
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bell hooks on Love
Read it here.
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How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
Read it here.
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Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird
Read it here.
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How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us
Read it here.
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Published December 28, 2023
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https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/12/28/best-of-2023/
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