Micro-stresses, Age and Wisdom, and Neutrinos
It’s been a year of writing these newsletters. I continue…
Three pieces from last week:
While we are likely to recognise the most stressful events, we may not be so good at isolating micro-stresses in our lives. According to this article in HBR, ‘most of us have come to accept micro-stresses as just a normal part of our day. We hardly acknowledge them, but cumulatively they are wearing us down.’ What’s worse is that these micro-stresses have become so ingrained and in our lives and often come from some of our dear ones, and that makes it difficult to address them. What stands out in this article is that it includes a ‘workbook’ that you can use to understand and isolate sources and nature of your micro-stresses. What you do after you have recognised them is a more complex task, however, the first step in any battle is recognising the enemy.
Arianna Huffington writes long, wonderful essays every week. This week’s reflections from her are about getting old, and what it means for her to turn 70. I found the following about her finding old journals and notebooks from the time she was 20 so good that I copied it in my notes: ‘And as I read back through half a century of notes, I’m struck by four things. First, by how early I knew what really mattered in life. Second, how bad I was at acting on that knowledge. Third, how draining and depleting all my worries and fears were. And fourth, how little those worries and fears turned out to matter.’ To her, getting old does not mean getting a disease but it means stepping closer to liberation and living life the way she always wanted to. Moreover, age has not stopped her from building new businesses, which she has continued to do till date. If you can, read this piece when you are not in a rush.
Randal Munroe, ex-NASA engineer, is great at breaking down extremely complex topics into simple, understandable reads. In this piece, he writes about neutrinos. Well, not so much explaining what neutrinos are, but rather to help us understand how tiny they are by answering the question about how many neutrinos will it take to form a snowball (answer is 300 decillion neutrinos). If you are looking for more technical understanding of neutrinos, and recent experiments designed to verify their properties, then you may find this other piece helpful. ‘In a perfect universe, we would not exist,' so it says. However, recent experiments have indicated that there may be a tiny difference in the masses of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos that may be responsible for our existence.
A quote that I came across last week:
“Life is too short to not be pursuing the best opportunity you know of”
