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Life is a practice of balance and subtraction.
I try to be deliberate not only about what I want in my life, but also about what I do not want, and to stop doing what no longer belongs.
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Capitalism has its appeal, but it defines success too narrowly.
Building products and providing services require capital, effort, and often a great deal of luck. This is one path to success, but today’s world amplifies it as though it were the only one.
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Simple things deserve a place in the world.
Not everything needs to become bigger, smarter, faster, or more profitable to be valuable.
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Language and identity are inseparable.
At some point, most people reflect on who they are. Language is inevitably part of that reflection, and for immigrants, the connection is often even more present and complicated.
Views that shaped me
Some views stay with me because they become part of how I understand people, power, identity, and myself. This is a small collection of those views.
The egg and the wall
If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals.
- Haruki Murakami
This view stayed with me because it gives me a simple moral orientation: when a person is crushed by a system, I want to remember the person first. The wall may have reasons, rules, history, and power, but the egg is alive.
Not my premier
Dan is hij formeel premier, maar niet mijn premier.
- Sigrid Kaag
Kaag: Wilders wordt niet mijn premier, Joop / BNNVARA, 24-11-2023.
This view stayed with me because it names a boundary: someone may become formally powerful through a system, but that does not require me to internally accept what they stand for as mine.