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

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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

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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

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Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders

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Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians

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How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön

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The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited

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The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love

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Nick Cave on the Art of Growing Older

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The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself

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How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love

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Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions

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Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to Be Reborn Each Day

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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

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Spell Against Indifference

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bell hooks on Love

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How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education

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Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird

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How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us

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