19. Maybe Don't Tomorrow Your Life Away

Nicole Costello

Sep 06, 2020

‘Say Parmigiana’ | Rome, Italy

Ciao amici,

Here are 5 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. Reading

Not to be dramatic, but this book changed my life.

Do not let the cheesy cover put you off, it is the book I recommend the most to my good friends.

Give it a whirl.

Then give his other brilliant book a whirl too.

And then, go on and change your life.

“If you want to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you that wants to create melodrama. This is the part that thinks there’s a reason not to be happy. You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your being. In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do. You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Go ahead, take a look at reality. You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience. You’re going to die anyway. Things are going to happen anyway. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.”

―Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

2. Buona Sera Bellissima

This gorgeous new hotel in Rome, Italy - Hotel Chapter Roma.

Pssssssssssst: if you’re headed to Rome, I recommend making a reservation to eat at one of my all time faves.

3. ASMR

My answer to the question ‘what is ASMR?’

4. On Philosophy

FORGIVENESS

is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, the act of forgiveness not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw center, to reimagine our relation to it.

It may be that the part of us that was struck and hurt can never forgive, and that forgiveness itself never arises from the part of us that was actually wounded. The wounded self may be the part of us incapable of forgetting, and perhaps, not meant to forget…

Forgiveness is a skill, a way of preserving clarity, sanity and generosity in an individual life, a beautiful question and a way of shaping the mind to a future we want for ourselves; an admittance that if forgiveness comes through understanding, and if understanding is just a matter of time and application then we might as well begin forgiving right at the beginning of any drama, rather than put ourselves through the full cycle of festering, incapacitation, reluctant healing and eventual blessing.

…at the end of life, the wish to be forgiven is ultimately the chief desire of almost every human being. In refusing to wait; in extending forgiveness to others now, we begin the long journey of becoming the person who will be large enough, able enough and generous enough to receive, at our very end, that necessary absolution ourselves.

— David Whyte