A case for reading difficult books.
I was always the kid who preferred to stay home and read rather than go outside and play. Other people were confusing and the outside world always fell short to the adventures I could have with a good book.
I read a lot. For my 13th birthday, I got 14 books by R. L. Stine, which I read in a week (they’re not very long). If you’ve never heard of him, he’s like Stephen King for teens. An extremely prolific writer (he published over 300 books so far) that writes horror. The books themselves are very much in the “young…
By definition, a Utopia is a good place that doesn’t exist but this doesn’t mean we can’t come close to impossible
In 2011, Slavoj Žižek held a speech at a gathering of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. In it, he shared what he called was an “old Communist joke” about a guy from East Germany who is sent to Siberia to work. Knowing that his mail will be read through by censors, he and his friend make a deal about a code. Everything he writes in blue is the truth, and everything that he writes in red is not.
A month or so later, the first letter arrives and it is entirely in blue. The letter describes the wonders and splendour…
Why I no longer worry about not being good enough
When I was younger, somehow I internalized this need to be good at things. No, scratch that. Not good. The best. I needed to be the best. I need to be brilliant.
Every single thing I did should have turned out perfectly from day one. And since that’s not how things work, it brought on a lot of heartbreak. It took me until a couple of years ago to understand that the only way you can grow is by making mistakes.
Perfectionism and the Slow Bludgeoning of Self-Esteem
I know this story is not unfamiliar to people because we live in a society that glorifies geniuses. We…
Lessons from Disney-Pixar’s Soul. (Spoilers ahead)
Recently I watched Disney-Pixar’s “Soul” and it was adorable. The aesthetic of the movie reminds me of their previous success “Inside Out” and, just like that film, “Soul” has a simple premise:
our understanding of what is important in life is wrong.
Making Your Dreams Come True Will Not Change Your Life
Joe Gardner is a high school music teacher, but all he really wants to do in life is to play with great jazz musicians. He wants fame and accolades that come with being a famous musician himself as well as meeting his heroes.
So when a former student calls him to ask if he wants to play with…
“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent.” Erich Fromm
American sociologist Salvatore Babones stated in his paper Sovereignty in Millennial World-System that “liberal democracy married to commodity fetishism is no longer the American culture but the world culture”. We have all been infected with the feverish American nightmare.
In recent years, more and more people have had enough. We are done being mindless consumers and we are done being miserable.
Cue minimalism. Cue hygge. Cue ikigai. Cue Marie Kondo. Cue living off the grid. Cue FIRE (becoming financially independent and retiring early).
What do all of these strategies have in common? …
The short answer is: yes. But you probably don’t have to worry about it.
Four years ago I moved from my home country of Croatia to the Czech Republic. It was very much a voluntary move, but it did have some unexpected consequences in reshaping who I am.
In 2018, Prague was ranked 7th top ex-pat city in the world. So when I moved there most of the people I met in the first few months was not Czech at all. That is why the language I have been using on a daily basis since moving here has been English.
Now, I wasn’t new to English. I started learning it when I was four…
Looking for something great to read? Look no further! I’ll bring you new book recommendations every month.
In this ongoing series, you can expect new book recommendations every month. At least one of the recommendations will be a fiction book and one a non-fiction book. The recommendations will be influenced by my personal preference and may not suit everyone’s taste.
If you do give the books a try, don’t hesitate to come back for a discussion!
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Why Trump’s Cameo in Home Alone 2 Shouldn’t Be Removed.
An obligatory public announcement: I am not a Trump supporter. This article is not about trying to exonerate Trump or paint him in a good light. The man is known for sexually harassing at least 26 different women and possibly raping his first wife Ivana (she claimed that he did not rape her in the “legal sense”). And that is enough for me, without even going into his politics, to find the man objectionable.
If you’ve ever heard of Christmas movies, you’ve probably heard of Home Alone. Perhaps you’re like me and those movies (Home Alone 1 and 2) are…
The future will bring more and more complex problems. We need to be able to engage in diverse and creative problem-solving.
Specialization is a process of becoming deeply proficient in a narrow field of interest. All of us start with a more or less generalized education. We learn maths, languages, arts, science… Our general knowledge is relatively broad, but also relatively shallow. Eventually, we choose a field of interest and either get a job in that field or study it.
Once you have chosen a field to study or found a job, you will learn specific skills that their field or position requires. The more you study a certain field or the longer you are employed in a particular industry, your…
Aspirations Towards Being the Renaissance (Wo)Man.
I don’t know about you, but when I was younger I was obsessed with the idea of the Renaissance Men. You know, those insanely multi-talented guys who painted the Sistine Chapel, created hyper-realistic statues, worked on flying machines, armoured vehicles, and proto-cars. I mean, how many hours did those guys have in their day?
One could argue that the reason they had that much time was that they lived off of the menial labour performed by the many forgotten women in their lives. The mothers, the sisters, the wives, the maids, and servants. It is, without a doubt, true that…
