Dear friends,
I’m excited to write to you about my weekly newsletter I’m calling Stop & Think.
I write to help people stop and think, and thus to restart and live more thoughtful, loving, deeply human lives with others.
In her brilliant book The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt argued that genuine thinking is only truly possible when we are willing to interrupt our drive toward easy answers, simple solutions, and satisfied desires. The good life requires this paradoxical pause that opens fresh room for new questions, creative imagination, deep gratitude, and radical responsibility. Thus Arendt judged,
“All thinking demands a stop-and-think.”
Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind
Martin Luther King, Jr. anticipated Arendt’s vision of thinking in his classic book Strength to Love. Dr. King asked, “Who doubts that…toughness of mind is one of humanity’s greatest needs?” And yet he observed “an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.” According to King,
.. Read More“Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
