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Friendship and Giving Good Advice

Good advice is a gift. Like any gift, it isn’t about you, but the other person. Here, this means that what matters is what helps your partner in conversation, and not your desire to be seen as wise. Tied up in this is an important recognition: good advice shouldn’t involve telling someone what to do […]

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Mobius as Metaphor: Strength & Weakness

The Mobius strip is a surface with one continuous side and one boundary. It folds in on itself with its opposite poles revealing themselves as the same side. It isn’t like a coin, which has two sides. On a coin, they really are opposites of one piece, but on a Mobius strip, they are one […]

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Staring Out Of The Window

Nobody says “I had a lovely day; the high point was staring out the window”. But, maybe they should. ‘Not everything which cannot be deemed useful is useless’ wrote Josef Pieper. For while science, accounting, exercising and eating are all useful, other activities, such as art, music, poetry, and quiet contemplation, while being ostensibly ‘useless’, […]

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Toppling The King

One of the lessons of Jungian psychology is that we are not one single entity. The thing we call ‘me’ or ‘the self’ is really a collection of voices or ‘selves’. Rather than one entity seated at a table, there are, in fact, multiple sitting together, all sharing a meal. Jung used the metaphor of […]

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A Philosophy of the Everyday

Philosophy, especially in the West, tends towards the abstract and complicated. This website is dedicated to the pursuit of recapturing philosophy from these distant and often incomprehensible heights and bringing it back down to Earth. Raw material for philosophy isn’t just found on dusty library shelves or exclusive journals. It can be discovered in everyday […]

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No

Even though it comprises no more than two letters and one syllable, ‘no’ ranks among the most punishing words in the English language. Contained in this very tiny word is a universe of potential meanings. When we run away from the possibility of being told “no”, we are often running away from something entirely different. […]

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On Caring Too Much About What Others Think

If we can’t decide who we are, others will make that decision for us. It is sad enough when two people dislike each other. It is even sadder to dislike yourself because someone else does. One of the most common questions we ask ourselves when we meet new people, especially on dates, is ‘do they […]

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How to Complain

As weird as it sounds, complaining is an art form. Just as we can appreciate the difference between a landscape painting of William Blake and a painting of a landscape featuring a sun (always confusingly wearing sunglasses) by our 6 year old niece; we can likewise appreciate the difference between a person who complains and […]

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Old Friend

There are people in our lives whom we remain friends with for no other apparent reason than we have been friends with them for such a long time. They have woven the inextricable threads of friendship throughout time; pulling at those threads could result in the entire tapestry falling apart. The tone might suggest that […]

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Against Comparison

From a very young age, we adopt what can be called a comparative mindset. As children, we compare our grades with our classmates, or compare our parents’ treatment with our siblings. In adulthood, we define our sense of wealth with those around us, from the cars we drive to the clothes we wear; or, we […]

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