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Mind & Meaning
The psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes — and what frontier life teaches us about being human.
Psychology suggests talking to yourself out loud can support cognitive performance for some people
Adults who eat the same breakfast every morning, take the same route to work, and order the same drink at every restaurant aren't boring, they may have built a small architecture of certainty in a life that taught them surprises rarely went their way
The harsh life lesson millennials are slowly learning the hard way
People who appear effortlessly content aren't always as emotionally well as they look — some have learned to need very little to stay easy to keep around
Psychology suggests adults who cry at commercials, old songs, and strangers being kind in public aren't necessarily overly sensitive — some may have spent years holding back tears
Psychology suggests self-taught people may solve problems differently from most people
I'm 38 and I have rarely felt fully at home anywhere — and in my mid-thirties I started wondering whether the feeling came from the places or from how I learned to live inside them
People who came of age in the 1960s and 70s may carry a fluency in human connection that is harder for the current world to teach
Adults who are genuinely kind but have no close family to lean on are not always unlucky — some grew up in households where generosity was mistaken for needing nothing back
My dad just turned 70 and he's one of the most contented men I've ever met — and watching him into my own middle age, I've started to understand that what makes him peaceful isn't the life he built, it's the quiet inventory of people he stopped trying to impress, opinions he stopped trying to win, and certainties he stopped needing to defend
