📚 Not Words, But Whole Life Stories to Live By
Life isn’t about living more, but living deeply. This is what I’ve learned from reading the powerful memoirs of unique and remarkable people.
A dying Carnegie Mellon professor.
The CEO of the Happiest Place on Earth.
Our first black FLOTUS.
A neurosurgeon-neuroscientist-turned-terminal patient.
These are the four people whose life stories have had a tremendous impact on how I live mine. They’ve taught me how to live a life of passion, principle, and purpose.
Let me introduce them to you. Just click the button below!
A Medium member? Hope you don’t mind giving this +50 claps! It’ll put the story in front of more eyes. And I’ll get to bring more value to more people!
Not a Medium member? Consider downloading the app and signing up (On Apple App Store & Google Play). It’s an amazing, frictionless, and ad-free reading experience!
👩🏽🎓 Don’t Throw Away Your Shot: Tell Your Story
I heard In The Heights was really good! Have you seen it? I haven’t, but I plan to real soon! Anyway, here’s a commencement speech by the writer of In the Heights and Hamilton—the best Broadway show ever—, Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I swear, this guy really knows how to tell an entertaining and compelling story. Here’s my favorite part. Though he refers to being an artist, I think it’s the same for, well, the rest of our lives.
He tells me the story of Giuseppe Verdi. A 19th century Italian composer of some note, who, in the space of a few short years, lost his wife and two young children to disease. He tells me that Verdi’s greatest works—Rigoletto, La Traviata—came not before, but after this season of Job, the darkest moments of his life. He looks me in the eyes and tells me, “You’re trying to avoid going through pain, or causing pain. I’m here to tell you that you’ll have to survive it if you want to be any kind of artist.”
❗️Bonus for the musical heads out there: If you haven’t seen this mash-up between LMM and Jimmy Fallon yet, well, you’re welcome. You have been blessed:
Can you believe we’re halfway through 2021?! Anyway, I am taking a week-long break from writing to focus on my mid-year life review. So I won’t be able to send out a newsletter next week.
I’ll see you back here on the 10th of July!
Until then, as Lin-Manuel Miranda said, be “painfully aware” of every minute and moment—no detail is too small for the good life. 🙂
Create the good life,
❤️ Ria