Welcome to those week’s 5BF: a tumultuous history of a
melting pot of incredible people, our right to question ourselves, the unsung
lovers of our lives, commercial space-race, and more…
1 – what I read
A history of Europe by Simon Jenkins – although I may have
been unable to impart the grandiosity of this book in me, Jenkin’s burstingly precise
and telling book of Europe’s long-standing history did however give me an idea
of where Europe came from, what she went through, the wars that were fought,
and which countries dominated this continent, or at least tried to. Perhaps
enough of a groundwork for future learnings.
2 – this week’s podcasts
What if I am wrong with Adam Grant @metaphysicalmilkshake –
Rain and Reza questions Grant on his latest publishing book ‘Think Again’, and
in doing so explores the ways how naïve and flawed human thinking can be, and the
importance, thereby, of questioning ourselves, our belief, values, opinions,
hatreds, biases, and so on, every now and then.
What to expect @poetryunboundS03 – an ironic, satirical, and
humanizing poem by Katie Manning, ‘what to expect’ is a response to the book
for pregnant women ‘what to expect when you are expecting’ where first time
pregnant women are, in a way, forced into expecting certain things, biased
things, a narrowed down list of things, dehumanizing. Manning humanizes the
experience of pregnancy with her ironic poem of listing down sixty-three random
yet meaningful things to expect in alphabetical order. A great poem to get me
back into listening ‘poetry unbound’.
All my friends are finding new beliefs @poetryunboundS02 –
Christian Wiman in this poem explores the aging process and the sometimes-overwhelming
changes that come with age. He talks about how his friends are finding new
beliefs in gods, ideas, and things, and how he is witnessing it all, rather helplessly
as years pass on, like the decades before; ‘earth spinning faster in the dark
space…’
3 – this week’s articles
*Due to Pocket crashing on my phone on beta 2 of Android 12, I couldn’t listen to any articles in the past month. But beta 3 is out and Pocket is running again; I have been patient.
‘I learned to do more by saying less’ Julian Barnes @guardian
– talking about his brilliant novel ‘The Sense of an Ending’, Barnes explains
how through age he got the confidence to ‘not tell everything’, and to say more
by saying less, along with the ability to move through time. Wisdom is indeed
the gift of age.
Treasure them @aeon – whenever we think about love, we think
about either family or partners. Friends never cross our mind, and if it did,
ew! However, through a statistical measurement and psychological investigation,
Anna Machin shows how our friends are the ultimate support system for us to go
through life, through its thin and thick. A must read.
The loneliness of love @brainpickings – Maria Popova brings
forth Sylvia Plath’s idea of existential loneliness, how in the lack of
activity, there’s always loneliness, and even when there arrives our significant
other, some deep part of us still remains lonely, maybe forever.
4 – Race to commercial
space-travel
Branson, and in a few days Bezos, launched their own private
spaceships for a short-travel of space and the experience of floating
weightlessly in air while looking down at earth from the darkness of space. These
space flight will soon be commercialized, and this article from The Guardian says that ‘it will become the next status symbol’ ‘a bragging right for billionaires’
but also big steps towards mankind’s ambitious journey into space. Who knows
what the future, in light of today’s present, holds…?
5 – this week’s quote
‘Forgiving is the only reaction which does not merely re-act,
but acts anew and unexpectedly; unconditioned by the act which provoked it and
therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one
who is forgiven.’ – Hannah Arendt