Letters, Life Partners and More: Must-Read Links

Every week on The Wisdom Daily, we bring you our favorite reads from sources around the web. Topics on this week’s list include a memoir by Mary-Louise Parker in the form of thank you letters, the journey to picking your life partner, writing as a way to find answers to life’s questions, the science of eating on Thanksgiving and more. Whatever’s transpiring in your life, may you find the words of wisdom you need.

 

1. Letters of Love

“My brother and I have talked about this, how we always loved [our father] so fiercely, even when he was impossible and even though he imbued us with some of that impossible-ness, because we never questioned for one second that we were loved. I’ve never articulated this before, but I never, ever needed to hear the words I love you from my father because he did them every day, even when he was in pain or when he was intolerable or when he was difficult or when I was difficult. He did it when he was angry. He did it in his sleep. He just loved so fiercely, and so completely.”

– Mary-Louise Parker discussing her new book, Dear Mr. You (Daily Beast)

 

2. Picking Your Partner

“When you take a bunch of people who aren’t that good at knowing what they want in a relationship, surround them with a society that tells them they have to find a life partner but that they should under-think, under-explore, and hurry up, and combine that with biology that drugs us as we try to figure it out and promises to stop producing children before too long, what do you get? A frenzy of big decisions for bad reasons.”

– Tim Urban, “How To Pick Your Life Partner” (Wait But Why)

 

3. Looking for Our Own Answers

“At the end of the day, my writing always has to be spiritual for me. It’s not about the artwork or writing being consumable… The writing is because I have questions and I want answers. I’m trying to be true to myself and learn about myself.”

– Rupi Kaur, on her new poetry collection, Milk and Honey (Quill and Quire)

 

4. ?A True Team Player

“I used to play basketball in college. I was a sub for a kid who was All-American, so I didn’t get to play very much, and usually it was at the very end of the game. If I was tired, frightened, or frozen, I didn’t play well. It came to me that I needed to be “in the game” before I ever got in the game. So I began to engage with the game, to yell at my own team, and point out things to them. And it worked–if I needed to play, I was already really into the game.”

– Phil Stutz, “Move Through Pain to Unleash Your Inner Potential” (Goop.com)

 

5. Crime and Punishment

“We typically balance one interest against another: liberty versus security, for instance, or community safety versus the constitutional rights of [suspects]. In practice, however, these exercises lead to demonization. That is the inevitable consequence of crusades that?purport to trace society’s ills to a particular group.”

– Joseph Marguiles, “The Limits of Criminal Justice Reform” (Boston Review)

 

6. Food Coma

“There’s a window of time during long meals when the people at the table don’t know whether or not they’re still hungry. When the hormone peptide tyrosine hits the brain, we know we’ve had highly caloric meals and need to stop, but before that we’re all just driving without GPS.”

– Sarah Sloat, “Overeat Strategically on Thanksgiving Using Science” (Inverse)

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