You can sleep like sardines in a room with people whose character you love and trust — you are bonded by much more than comfort and wealth. You actually take comfort and emotional nourishment from each other's presence. But you will not want to spend time, even in a
An open heart is the highest possible bar for behaviours that lead to connection. If you ask yourself, "what would need to be true for me to open my heart to this person?" — then you have the price of connection. And it isn't perfection. Surplus is
A formulation of five key, rather widely-accepted, principles of human emotional life, expressed in the simplest form I can, are: 1. Do not abandon. 2. Do not exploit weakness — protect it. 3. Do not betray. 4. Do not control. And: 5. Be honest. If you realise any of these things
One of the key principles of maths when you are learning it is that you will get it wrong. Very often. There is nothing "moral" about this. If you have never been taught it properly — working up from ground principles to the more complex ones that stack on
When people talk about doing the right thing as "moral," it almost escapes the whole beauty of the thing. The beauty lies in the mathematical precision behind things — and that social life too is ruled by principles. These principles are beautiful to ponder in their own right. Staring
I think those who don't accept any fighting have been scarred by bad fighting, in the same way that people can be put off caring by bad relationships. Honourable, good fighting is a backbone of building the things we love. Good relationships and caring have never been possible
What I want to tell my partly-pacifist family: You can't have love without hate. You cannot selectively shut emotions down. You either connect to life that is in front of you and all its reality — which will expose you to the full spectrum of emotions which match the
We are more connected through a hard truth (we face together) than through a pretty lie. A couple is more connected when going through a break-up they both face the truth of together than they are in maintaining a relationship that necessitates the performance of a lie. Family members who
What I want to tell my family: A family is an organisation — an organisation that rests on 2 things: 1. People wanting to spend time together and 2. the environment around them, or where they live their lives or meet, to be functional. There are two costs to pay to
I was doing something wrong at work yesterday — I had been doing it for a while with the best of intentions, stuck in something that wasn't working for me or for others. A woman I was newly working with corrected me in no uncertain terms: she told me