Southern Europeans believe, in their core, that there are certain inalienable rights. And those rights shouldn’t consist of only basic intangible ideas, such as liberty (so dear to Americans). To us, liberty is just a starting point. It is not an end in itself.
To be able to endure the misery and the boredom together until the very end — that seems to be the secret of a long marriage in my family. And, by god, it is a very public secret.
The self-motivation required by the will to achieve is a miserable, daily struggle. You can become resentful. You despise others for not recognizing your greatness and you resent them for not demanding all these great things from you.
For years, we’ve heard about the countless disasters that happen in African countries, but here is a country who has suffered about as much as it is possible to suffer in this world and yet, it doesn’t seem to enjoy the paltry benefits of being an imploded star, a bullseye of tragedy.
At its best, life there seems to have achieved the perfect balance of priorities, not focusing on the question of how much we should work and how much we should play, but focusing instead on how we should work and how we should play.
The current world is not only a place that changes rapidly; it is a place where the rate of change increases rapidly and where constant and ubiquitous innovation is the norm.
While we are on the subject of elections — Sarah Palin?
I could no longer stand the Freudian irony of killing myself by tiny increments because of a numbing fear of death.
I’d venture to say that about 40% of those present were actually there to watch the show. Most people there spent their hours biting their fingernails, checking their phones, smoking e-cigarettes; taking selfies; petting their tiny, squirrel-like dogs; and judging, always judging.