Air Fiesta Books Bragging Building in Public Cycling Food for thought Funny Games Interviews Love Lucid Dreaming Mental Health Movies Open Goals Poetry Productivity Quotes Ranting Smart Keys Sustainability Techy Travel Youper
A tip to all the Captain Ahabs out there:
“Be careful when hiring young men with dreamy faces, thin bodies, and deep eyes; be very careful, for whales must be spotted before they are hunted. A boy fond of meditations will take your ship around the world ten times without seeing a single whale.”
From Moby Dick
I received, 500 years later, a letter from a traveler (Pero de Magalhães Gandavo) who once wandered through a place vulgarly called Brazil.
Among his writings, this observation caught my attention:
“The language of these natives along the whole coast is one; it lacks three letters, you will not find F, nor L, nor R in it. A remarkable thing, for thus they have no Fé (Faith), no Lei (Law), nor Rei (King); and in this way they live without Justice, and in disorder.”
Pero de Magalhães Gandavo
Oh, Gandavo…
I wish we had kept our lives without those letters.
Two traveler friends were once stuck with little money to continue their journey.
We happened to bump into each other on the road, and a quick brainstorm led us to create a project where people could fund their trip by buying a 10×10 cm piece on their kombi to write something.
The inspiration came from the 1 Million Pixel project, where people could buy a pixel for $1. I helped them set up a page and payment system. Everything went smoothly, and many people ended up helping them complete the trip.
One curious thing about nonviolence is that, in most languages, there isn’t an active term for it: the concept exists only in opposition to the main one: violence.
Ahimsa, in Sanskrit, is a compound word: himsa, meaning “to cause harm,” and the prefix a, meaning “not.”
It seems like a small detail, but what if language is a thermometer of our priorities as a society?
“If we lived in a world where there was no word for war except non-peace, what kind of world would that be? It wouldn’t necessarily be a world without war, but one where war would be seen as something aberrant and insignificant.”
“My friend has done South America…”
– Old Diego
Definitions for “did” include: carry out, undertake, discharge, act, behave, suffice, to serve a purpose, prepare, make, organize, create or produce, decorate, style, present, grant, pay or render, work out, calculate, solve, to be employed at, manage, cope, succeed, move at a particular pace.
Lessons from Do things, Not Countries by Jennifer Sutherland-Miller