smart ideas from books
Here are 5 things I learned reading: The 33 Strategies Of War, By: Robert Greene
1. The term guerrilla warfare came from Napoleon fighting in Spain.
2. People usually leave out details for a reason.
3. “Hashshashin” later became the word “assassin.”
4. If in doubt, end something quickly.
5. Always be looking for more options.
Did I ever wake up to this life? Have any of us?
I think that the very fact we are here is a beautiful mystery, no matter how you might be looking at it all.
The truth is that with all of the pain and beauty and love in the world, I would hate for you to sleep through your time here, unaware of how incalculably precious this whole thing is.
The scope of the why of it all can feel like getting hit by a freight train when you finally open your eyes.
Am I awake now?
Are you?
It was hot, so hot the mirror felt
warm. I washed before the mirror in a daze, my twisted summer sleep still hung about me like sea kelp. What blood was this, and what roses? It could have been the rose ofunion , the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth. The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain. I never knew. I never knew as I washed, and theblood streaked , faded, and finally disappeared, whether I’d purified myself or ruined the blood sign of thepassover . We wake, if we ever wake at all, tomystery , rumors of death, beauty, violence…. “Seem like we’re just set down here,” a woman said to me recently, “and don’t nobody know why.”
-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek
