Peace through Diplomacy during these Unprecedented Times
It sounds paradoxical & absurd to think that some of us might need to find something to worry about in order to recover our equilibrium. Worry is, after all, something we should rightly hate to have to suffer & should engage with only when absolutely necessary.
Yet, some of us do start to feel distinctly nervous when things around us settle down & pervasive stillness descends. We start to feel anxiety about the future precisely when ~ & in a sense because ~ there is nothing especially awful on the horizon. We wake up in the middle of a quiet night, filled with an unnamable dread. We may pick up our phones in the hope that they will deliver a requisite shock of anxiety: we scan the news for alarming stories; we look out for aggressive or problem-laden emails. Normally, we quickly hit on something to return us to a more familiar panicked mode.
Our behaviour might be easy to mock & dismiss but the fact that we need to find something to worry about isn’t mere indulgence. It’s evidence of a particular kind of problem that deserves special compassion & patient understanding. The compulsive need to worry is evidence that ~ somewhere in a past we haven’t fully unpacked & understood ~ we underwent something properly worrying & sad. Before our adult faculties were adequately in place, we suffered a traumatic set of events that jammed our inner alarms into their ‘on’ modes & we haven’t been able to quieten them, or soothe ourselves, since.
"Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore." ~ (Attributed to) Albert Einstein
But what is worse is that the original trauma has been forgotten. We don’t even notice that the inner alarms are ringing. The manic worrier worries, as it were, about ‘everything’ because they are unable to be appropriately concerned with, & in mourning for, one or two big things from long ago. The anxiety that belonged to one particular distant time & place has been redistributed & subdivided across hundreds of ever shifting topics in the present (from workplace to reputation, money to household tasks) because its true source & origins remain unknown to the sufferer.
"Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness." ~ Yousuf Karsh
“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.” ~ Curated Excerpt From: Amal El-Mohtar. “This Is How You Lose the Time War.” Apple Books.
Curated via The School of Life. Thanks for reading, cheers! (with a glass of wine & book of course)
2018 Maison André GOICHOT Savigny Les Beaune Premier Cru Aux Guettes
Producer: Maison André GOICHOT, Chorey-les-Beaune, Burgundy, France
"In this wine, notes of fresh, red cherry have a slight raspberry glint. The palate presents the same aromatic, fresh fruit, bright but really ripe. This wine is fresh, slightly crunchy, light & totally appetizing." ~ 91 Points ~ Wine Enthusiast Anne Krebiehl MW
Founded in 1947 close to Meursault, this thriving family company took a great step forward in 2000 by building new premises near Beaune. This high-tech site has enabled the company to optimise working conditions and to become completely independent for bottling and labelling operations.
Even though our eyes are turned towards the future, we have a deep respect for tradition. The close long-standing ties that André GOICHOT have with wine producers of the region enable us to select the best the region has to offer and to propose to our customers a wide range of appellations: Chablis, Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune, Côte Chalonnaise. The wines we offer regularly receive awards at wine fairs or from the most prestigious guides: Guide Hachette des Vins, astevinage, Gault Millau and Burgondia d’Or.
The GOICHOT family also owns vineyards: the Burgundy white ‘Les Dressolles’ produced with grapes from Meursault, and the Montagny “Chateau de la Guiche” from the Côte Chalonnaise.
A careful tasting and selection of each wine has been carried out by André Goichot himself. The whole harvest is vinified, matured, bottled and marketed at André Goichot winehouse. This success story bears witness to André Goichot’s commitment to creating a future for the company.
This Is How You Lose the Time War
By: Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
"This fast fiction read has won just about everything: the Nebula Award for Best Novella of 2019, the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella, & more. DO NOT look at the Amazon description, any reviews, or any overviews of the plot. Just buy it & dive in. The less you know beforehand, the better, & its 150~190 pages will fly by. Try the first 20~30 pages, & you’ll see what I mean." ~ Tim Ferriss
