5 Bites Friday #43

 

Welcome to this week’s 5BF: two opposite movies but with a similar message, sources of meaning in life, the magic of running, and more…

 

1: What I Read

The Meaning of Life by The School of Life – a short book with a big aim of finding the sources of meaning which makes our lives worth living; it is important for us to sometimes ask ourselves this question of what makes life meaningful, not only during mental illnesses, but generally too – for in answering such a heavy question, we are sure to find some intimate details about ourselves and our own lives.

 

2: This Week’s Articles

How Neuroscience explain the mind-clearing magic of running@thecut.com – this short article explains, and thereby excites the readers, about the amazing benefits of rigorous 30-40 minutes sweat-pouring running. A must read, for you might not know that you like running.

Your brain is not for thinking @nytimes – the mind/brain duality confuses many readers for they think they are both the same; this article explains the biological function of the brain as an organ, and how understanding this can help us in our daily lives, especially with mental illnesses.

The benefits of laziness @nesslabs – we need to remove the stigma against laziness, and in defense of it, show how active procrastination is not only helpful but important since it allows the active procrastinators do be productive when they need to, and relax when they can.

 

3: Movie Recommendations

Driveways – Codi, an 8 year old son of a single mom, moves into his deceased aunt’s house. In the neighborhood, there lives an old, retired military man, entirely by himself. Given Codi’s over-sensitive and shy nature, he becomes friends with this old man, and this movie is about their unusual yet important friendship. I can make a list of many things I learned from this movie, and besides all of its lessons, it’s just a really heartfelt movie. A must watch in my book!

Sound of Metal – while the first recommendation might not appeal to the younger and action-prone audiences, this movie might or might not either. A couple lives a nomadic live inside an RV and records metal music and goes on their tours. However, one day the boyfriend realizes he cannot hear anything – from this point on, it’s his excruciating journey of acceptance and compromise, while trying to make sense of his new life.

 

4: a poem: ‘Not as far as the forest’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay

That chill is in the air

Which the wise know well, and even have learned to bear.

This joy, I know,

Will soon be under snow.

The sun sets in a cloud

And is not seen.

Beauty, that spoke aloud,

Addresses now only the remembering ear.

The heart begins here

To feed on what has been.

Night falls fast.

Today is in the past.

Blown from the dark hill hither to my door

Three flakes, then four

Arrive, then many more.

II

Branch by branch

This tree has died. Green only

Is one last bough, moving its leaves in the sun.

What evil ate its root, what blight,

What ugly thing,

Let the mole say, the bird sing;

Or the white worm behind the shedding bark

Tick in the dark.

You and I have only one thing to do:

Saw the trunk through.

III

Distressed mind, forbear

To tease the hooded Why:

That shape will not reply.

From the warm chair

To the wind's welter

Flee, if storm's your shelter.

But no, you needs must part,

Fling him his release--

On whose ungenerous heart

Alone you are at peace.

IV

Not dead of wounds, not borne

Home to the village on a litter of branches, torn

By splendid claws and the talk all night of the villagers,

But stung to death by gnats

Lies Love.

What swamp I sweated through for all these years

Is at length plain to me.

V

Poor passionate thing,

Even with this clipped wing how well you flew!--though not so far as the forest.

Unwounded and unspent, serene but for the eye's bright trouble,

Was it the lurching flight, the unequal wind under the lopped feathers that brought you down,

To sit in folded colours on the empty level field,

Visible as a ship, paling the yellow stubble?

Rebellious bird, warm body foreign and bright,

Has no one told you?--Hopeless is your flight

Towards the high branches. Here is your home,

Between barnyard strewn with grain and the forest tree.

Though Time refeather the wing,

Ankle slip the ring,

The once-confined thing

Is never again free.

 

5: This Week’s Quote

‘I think you overestimate the maturity of adults’. – Meggie Nelson (The Argonauts)