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    “Simply having a phone on the table or within reach keeps the conversations shallow.  None of this would be a big deal if mobile and app-based conversation were complementing rather than replacing face-to-face conversation, but that’s not the case.  In fact, so many people are turning to digital to have potentially messy and emotional conversations in a less messy and emotional way.  It may bring more calm to a relationship, sure, but it also strips the vulnerability and revelation that come from looking someone in the eye, seeing how your words land, seeing how their body responds, hearing the catch in their breath, understanding what is truly going on between you in a way no emoji chain or composed text could ever express.  That emotional, messy, hard, exhilarating, don’t-know-what’s-coming-next space is where the moments that make life most worth living lie.  Kill the space, kill the moment.  Hello, tidy matrix and numbed-out life.” ~ Jonathan Fields, How To Live A Good Life

      “While investing deeply in one person, one place, one job, one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience.  There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for five years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade, when you’ve been working on the same skill or craft for half your lifetime.  Now that I’m in my thirties, I can finally recognize that commitment, in its own way, offers a wealth of opportunity and experiences that would otherwise never be available to me, no matter where I went or what I did.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

        “If people cheat, it’s because something other than the relationship is more important to them.  It may be power over others.  It may be validation through sex.  It may be giving in to their own impulses.  Whatever it is, it’s clear that the cheater’s values are not aligned in a way to support a healthy relationship.  And if the cheater doesn’t admit this or come to terms with it, if he just gives the old ‘I don’t know what I was thinking; I was stressed out and drunk and she was there’ response, then he lacks the serious self-awareness necessary to solve any relationship problems.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

          “To truly appreciate something, you must confine yourself to it.  There’s a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you’ve spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career.  And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting the alternatives.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

            “Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it.  Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, or (gulp) one person.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck