The Marginalian
20 articles
What Happens When We Die
"How can a creature who will certainly die have an understanding of things that will exist forever?"
C.S. Lewis on How to Structure the Days of a Creative Life and Train the Receptive Imagination
There are, in my experience, two fundaments of the creative life: putting yourself regularly in the path of wonder and getting out of your own way in order to receive what you enco…
David Bowie Answers the Famous Proust Questionnaire
"Q: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? A: Living in fear."
Inner Space, Outer Space, and How to Be an Astronaut in the Cosmos of Connection: Eric Berne on the Key to True Intimacy
"A star is the glowing light inside the other person, distantly seen, brave soul’s tiny flame, too bright to approach without great courage and integrity."
Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful and Creative Predator
Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most creative and most successful apex predator. Although they are known as killer whale…
Bertrand Russell on the Secret of Happiness
"Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile."
The Weasel and the Meaning of It All: Annie Dillard on How to Live
Suppose we answer the most important question of existence in the affirmative. There is then only one question remaining: How shall we live this life? Despite all the technologies …
Do Not Spare Yourself: An Antidote to Feeling Like You Are Waiting to Start Living
The only thing more dangerous than wanting to save another person — a dangerous desire too often mistaken for love — is wanting to save yourself, to spare yourself the disappointme…
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
How to Handle a Narcissistic and Abusive Parent: Kafka’s Remarkable Letter to Father
"It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can wa…
How to Speak Forest
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way,” William Blake wrote in his most passionate letter. “As a man is, so …
Nietzsche on How to Find Yourself and the True Value of Education
"No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life."
How to Fall in Love Better: A Field Guide to Enlightened Enchantment
Enchantment, J.R.R. Tolkien believed, is “as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life.” But enchantment is a story we tell ou…
Emerson on How to Trust Yourself
"It is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety
"There are more things ... likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
The Three Elements of the Good Life
To be a true person is to be entirely oneself in every circumstance, with all the courage and vulnerability this requires. And yet because a person is a confederacy of parts often …
How to Be a Poet: Elizabeth Alexander on the Yin-Yang of Connection and Contradiction
“The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us,” James Baldwin wrote. “Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leade…