What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of min… - Maria Popova

Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? Does genius suffice for happiness, does distinction, does love?

We navigate the unknown frontiers of the social universe through a sextant of existing relationships — nearly every new person we meet is within only a few degrees of separation from someone we already know. But every once in a while, pure chance intercedes to remind us that whatever structures of control we may put into place, however much we may mistake the illusion of choice for the fact of choice, randomness is the reigning monarch of the universe.

Unlike critical thinking, that pillar of reason and necessary counterpart to hope, [cynicism] is inherently uncreative, unconstructive, and spiritually corrosive.

A quarter millennium later, Emily Dickinson would write in a poem the central metaphor of which draws on Kepler’s legacy:

Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.