FEBRUARY TL;DR: A summary for those on the go!
Pieces too long? Read this!
Amanda Stern
February 28, 2023
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the long articles, or just don't have the bandwidth? Have no fear; TL;DR for FEBRUARY is here! This new digest summarizes the vital bits from the month's "How to Live" newsletter so you don't miss a thing.
This article from February 1st, 2023, was about the death of a friend and WHY SAYING I LOVE YOU ISN'T ENOUGH.
On January 18, I lost a dear friend to cancer at the young age of 52. Paul La Farge was inventive, imaginative, witty, hilarious, deeply kind, and unsparingly generous. He was also a stunning writer and a master wordsmith.
After his death, I thought about how we live and how we might deepen our connections to the ones we love while still alive.
I thought this...
After someone dies, social media posts often call everyone to “Hold your loved ones close tonight” or “Tell your partner you love them.” And yes, I agree, we should! But these declarations have become, to me, bromides as trite as “thoughts and prayers.” They fall far short of what we should regularly give to our loved ones.
And I arrived at this...
Telling someone you love them is a wonderful, life-enhancing gift; telling someone why you love them is more profound and longer-lasting.
What (I love you) is valuable; of course, it is. But why holds the what of love aloft, enriching and deepening one's experience of themselves. We don’t get to experience ourselves as though we were a story told in the third person.
What enriches the monologic experience of being a single human being is learning how we impact others and hearing how we have added to the lives of others. When we tell our friends and loved ones how they impact us and why, we open up portals they may not have realized existed in them, which can expand their world and yours.
I concluded the newsletter by thanking you, dear readers, for reading and supporting my work and sending me emails that I answer, but often not in a timely manner.
Because I don't lock content behind a paywall, my only income is from you, dear readers. HOW TO GIVE: if you find value in this newsletter, if it makes you feel better or less alone, please consider a donation. I rely on your support to keep these resources unlocked and available to everyone. I spend nearly 300 hours a month researching, reading, writing, and producing material, pouring considerable resources, money, and energy into everything behind the scenes to build and maintain this work. Every dollar helps keep me and this newsletter alive. THANK YOU.
This article from February 8th was about MAMIE PHIPPS CLARK, whose doll study changed history.
Mamie Phipps Clark was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1943. She devoted her work to assessing the racial consciousness and self-consciousness of Black children in segregated education.
Born in the Jim Crow South in 1917 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to a well-respected physician and a homemaker, Phipps experienced firsthand what it was like to have few rights and be barred from most public establishments. Black people couldn’t vote and were denied the right to an equal education—with the resources allotted to white students.
Segregation cast an indelible impact on her childhood. So much so that she would eventually decide to base her studies on the harm segregated education has on Black children.
While doing her master’s in psychology, she focused specifically on pinpointing when Black children become conscious and aware of their race. The findings were staggering.
The study revealed racial awareness in Black boys as young as age 3. Their responses to the images and objects led to the Clarks’ conclusion that awareness of self as Black led to a sense of inferiority and self-hatred, results that Kenneth found disturbing.
Using one white doll and one black doll, Mamie and her husband, Kenneth Clark, asked black children a series of questions about the dolls to see how they felt about themselves. The children chose the white doll when asked which doll was nice, and they showed the black doll when asked which doll was bad.
The study changed history as it was used in Brown vs. Board of Education to prove the harmful effects segregated schools had on black children.
Because I don't lock content behind a paywall, my only income is from you, dear readers. HOW TO GIVE: if you find value in this newsletter, if it makes you feel better or less alone, please consider a donation. I rely on your support to keep these resources unlocked and available to everyone. I spend nearly 300 hours a month researching, reading, writing, and producing material, pouring considerable resources, money, and energy into everything behind the scenes to build and maintain this work. Every dollar helps keep me and this newsletter alive. THANK YOU.
DID YOU KNOW I LAUNCHED an ONSITE-ONLY SERIES CALLED Dispatches From the Past?
This onsite-only post from February 8th resurrected an old Reader's Digest essay by Charlie Chaplin On What Makes People Laugh.
"THERE is nothing more mysterious about my comicality on the screen than there is about Harry Lauder’s way of getting his public to laugh. You'll find that both of us know a few simple truths about human nature, and we use them in our jobs. And when all is said and done, the foundation of all success is only a knowledge of human nature."
So begins Charlie Chaplin's short essay.
He then goes on to enumerate the embarrassingly human traits he exploits to make things funny: from the person in a wild predicament who refuses to admit anything is wrong to rich people having a bad time.
Because I don't lock content behind a paywall, my only income is from you, dear readers. HOW TO GIVE: if you find value in this newsletter, if it makes you feel better or less alone, please consider a donation. I rely on your support to keep these resources unlocked and available to everyone. I spend nearly 300 hours a month researching, reading, writing, and producing material, pouring considerable resources, money, and energy into all that goes on behind the scenes to build and maintain this work. Every dollar helps keep me and this newsletter alive. THANK YOU.
This piece from February 14th is How to Live's annual Valentine's Day post about marrying a stranger the day I met him.
One day in the 90s, I met a stranger on the subway, chatted him up, and we decided to get married.
Some pieces need to be read in full; I'm sorry. Just trust me on this one.
Because I don't lock content behind a paywall, my only income is from you, dear readers. HOW TO GIVE: if you find value in this newsletter, if it makes you feel better or less alone, please consider a donation. I rely on your support to keep these resources unlocked and available to everyone. I spend nearly 300 hours a month researching, reading, writing, and producing material, pouring considerable resources, money, and energy into everything behind the scenes to build and maintain this work. Every dollar helps keep me and this newsletter alive. THANK YOU.
This piece from February 16th reveals two resurrected videos of James Baldwin on suffering and people's attitudes toward the LBGTQ+ communities.
Because I don't lock content behind a paywall, my only income is from you, dear readers. HOW TO GIVE: if you find value in this newsletter, if it makes you feel better or less alone, please consider a donation. I rely on your support to keep these resources unlocked and available to everyone. I spend nearly 300 hours a month researching, reading, writing, and producing material, pouring considerable resources, money, and energy into all that goes on behind the scenes to build and maintain this work. Every dollar helps keep me and this newsletter alive. THANK YOU.
This piece from February 22nd is an essay from Rachel Carson on Helping Children to Wonder.
When her nephew Roger—whom she would one day adopt and parent— was 20 months old, she wrapped him in a cozy blanket, ferried him down to the beach after dark in the rain, following the call of crash and froth, the confetti of glorious glitter illuminating the sky, the showering salty mist of ocean spray on their skin, to take in the symphonic sundries of the natural world.
The wonder that the world can instill in a child is something no book or class can ever teach. “It is not half so important to know as to feel,” wrote Carson.
Once a child feels the thrill of awe, they will seek the knowledge they need to know more.
She made clear that access and location should not be seen as limitations. If you’re in a city, “you can always look at the sky, the clouds, the stars and listen to the wind. You can feel the rain on your face and think of its long passage from sea to air to earth…go to the park and observe the mysterious migrations of the birds, the changing seasons, and the seeds of plants.”
“Those who dwell along the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life..."
Head to the park and pick up a leaf. Tend to the small things that make up the big things because everything that makes us suffer can be broken down into small things. Let’s get used to identifying the world around us, so we can better identify the feelings inside us.
Because I don't lock content behind a paywall, my only income is from you, dear readers. HOW TO GIVE: if you find value in this newsletter, if it makes you feel better or less alone, please consider a donation. I rely on your support to keep these resources unlocked and available to everyone. I spend nearly 300 hours a month researching, reading, writing, and producing material, pouring considerable resources, money, and energy into everything behind the scenes to build and maintain this work. Every dollar helps keep me and this newsletter alive. THANK YOU.
Don't keep How to Live a secret: This newsletter is written for everyone interested in psychology and the art of living.
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Until next week, I remain…
Amanda
📬️ Got questions, comments, or ideas for topics? Please email me at: [email protected]
Nope, I'm not a therapist or a medical professional; I’m just a human trying to figure out how to live.
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