Recently I’ve been reading “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” by Sally Rooney (one of my favorite authors). And I’ve been loving it, her books are “slice of life” style and they’re focused on love + relationships. This book follows two friends as well as some other people intertwined in their life. Something that comes up a lot is what is our purpose in life and also how social media and technology influence our values.
Here’s a recent quote from it that I loved:
“What if the meaning of life on earth is not eternal progress toward some unspecified goal– the engineering and production of more and more powerful technologies, the development of more and more complex and abstruse cultural forms? What if these things just rise and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same always — just to live and be with other people?” pg. 169, Chapter 16
Sometimes I think we as humans overcomplicate things and lose sight of the bigger picture, in that we are small + insignificant. I don’t mean that to be depressing but so many problems and inequalities arise from people becoming too self important and greedy. Overall, Sally Rooney always finds a way to take my thoughts and feelings and put them onto the page in such a beautiful way.
Hi Jalen,
I am soon going to be taking a long flight and so I’m glad to see you promoting this book as I might be in need of one. Your blog brought me back to a TEDtalk I once listened to where he discussed two fundamental leadership/life lessons. 1) It’s all about you, 2) It’s never about you. The paradox is that we can look at life through these different scopes and probably both would be right. While these are quite simple phrases, I don’t think that humans will ever get “it” right. I think we will spend our time fighting these two opposites.
–Ashley