Celebrating Ten Years of Maria Popova's Brain Pickings, #3

Over the past several years, Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings the inventory of a meaningful life, has become one of my favorite sources of inspiration. Brain Pickings was born as an “eccentric personal record” of Maria’s studies and originally sent to seven readers. Now, it is included in the Library of Congress’s archive of “materials of historical importance.”

In celebration of her tenth year of Brain Pickings, Maria offers us ten of her life-earned core beliefs. This is rich stuff so they will be offered one at a time over the next ten weeks. If you’re impatient or want more, go to Brain Pickings and get your own subscription. Incredibly, this feast is still free … although she accepts donations, suggesting a donation level ranging from “a cup of tea to a good dinner.”

3. Be generous. Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.

Lynne Twist states, "Generosity and gratitude are linked. It's what I call the well of being that's infinite. And, when we're in touch with that, we're naturally generous. When we're naturally generous, we're naturally grateful because gratefulness is the experience of the great fullness of our lives.

Here is the third in Maria Popova's list of things she loved reading and writing about:
Telling Is Listening: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Magic of Real Human Conversation