Note to the Reader
Welcome In
‘Unhappiness stems from having only one perspective to play with.’
Alain de Botton
The most important lesson life has taught me is that there’s always another way to see things. Whenever we’re feeling off or not quite right, there’s always a healing thought available. Sometimes it’s nearby and easy to access; others, it’s harder to find.
The purpose of this project is to ask and answer:
What might help us here? How can we summon up our best ideas when we really need them? Can we create tools to encourage our own better natures? Is there an imaginative way to remember?
Of course there is. There’s a hundred ways. Throughout this newsletter, I'll share a series of notes on what I call “The Inner Act” - the practice of reaching for, holding onto, and acting from our highest thinking.
What I have to say isn’t new (everything is a remix), but my expression is original. Like a musician opposed to genres, my delivery includes essays, letters, sketches, fragments, formulas and other experimental compositions.1
As a final word, let me say that I too am in a state of learning and becoming, not in a state of knowing and having become. My intention is simply to put ideas on display and invite you to look at them on your own way up the mountain.2
Happy Browsing,
Javier
“What you want people to love, you should first make beautiful.” I believe in this idea from the Renaissance, and my aim is to mirror the era’s teaching-via-seduction by offering content that is useful, informationally organized and visually attractive.
“Our collection of thoughts is like a toolkit. Thoughts are instruments we use when we engage with the world, and the quality of that engagement depends on the suitability of the tools and their condition. Intellectual life is simply the art of building a better toolkit.” The School of Life
Image Credits:
The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine, Sanford Robinson Gifford 1864