Weekly Question & Framework: March 28, 2025

In 2004, a Finnish-American photographer named Arno Minkkinen gave the commencement speech at the New England School of Photography.In the speech, he offered a powerful thought experiment:Imagine for a moment that you find yourself at the large bus station in the center of Helsin ...  Show more

In 1918, German theoretical physicist Max Planck won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of energy quanta.After winning the prize, he went on a tour, giving lectures at universities and institutions around the country on his findings.There’s an apocryphal story from that tour that ...  Show more

All optimistic beliefs can be dangerous because they’re so comforting, so easy to accept without asking further questions. Hope often masquerades as optimism when you think things will improve only because the alternative is too scary to contemplate. 

Every optimist n ...

“It’s easy to be a naive idealist. It’s easy to be a cynical realist. It’s quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.”       Marie-Louise von Franz To be a philosophical pessimist is to be acutely aware of the tragic side of life and to believe that ...  Show more

We live in a culture obsessed with hope. We are trained to believe that being hopeful is the key to success. Stay positive. The sun will come out tomorrow. Keep the faith. But maintaining that kind of blind hope is hard. When our hopes are dashed, we often feel defeated. In a wor ...  Show more

As we advance through life, we will not only be visited by good fortune. Dangerous times will also make an appearance.
 
I’ve come to realize, as the years etch more notches on my belt, that troubles are actually precious friends, in disguise.
 
They serve to…< ...