Love, music, solitude, and how to be more alive — the best of The Marginalian 2022, in one place

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program.[View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [The Marginalian]( [Welcome] Hello {NAME}! This is the annual recap of [The Marginalian]( by Maria Popova. The weekly newsletter remains on its regular pulse-beat and will be with you at the usual time. If my labor of love enriches your life in any way, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( — for sixteen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive (as have I) thanks to reader patronage. If you already donate: You are among the kind-hearted 1% making this available to the free-riding 99%, and I appreciate you more than you know. NOTE: This is a long edition and your email program may cut it short. [Use this link]( to read it uncut. [Love, Music, Solitude, and How to Be More Alive: The Best of The Marginalian 2022]( It is an [annual tradition]( to look back on the year’s readings and sieve the most nourishing — a tradition all the more vital and vitalizing in stormy years, when these oases of light are all the more precious. Here is the usual composite “best” of the year — a hybrid of the pieces I poured the most heart into writing and the pieces most widely read and shared by those whose hearts they touched. * * * [The Eternal Lyric of Love and Loss: “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Little-Known Poems for the Tragic Love of Her Life]( Read it [here](. * * * [Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”]( Read it [here](. * * * [The Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love]( Read it [here](. * * * [Resolutions for a Life Worth Living: Attainable Aspirations Inspired by Great Humans of the Past]( Read it [here](. * * * [Bloom: The Evolution of Life on Earth and the Birth of Ecology (Joan As Police Woman Sings Emily Dickinson)]( Read/watch it [here](. * * * [Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness]( Read it [here](. * * * [The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing]( Read it [here](. * * * [How to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James]( Read it [here](. * * * [Art as Living Amends: Nick Cave on Creativity as an Instrument of Self-Forgiveness and the Necessity of Hope in a Fragile World]( Read it [here](. * * * [Full Tilt: Dervla Murphy’s Fierce and Poetic Account of Traversing the World on Two Wheels in the 1960s]( Read it [here](. * * * [The Bittersweet Story of the Real-Life Peaceful Bull Who Inspired Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s Ferdinand]( Read it [here](. * * * [What Happens When We Die]( Read it [here](. * * * [Games People Play: The Revolutionary 1964 Model of Human Relationships That Changed How We (Mis)Understand Ourselves and Each Other]( Read it [here](. * * * [3 Things to Learn from a Child, 7 from a Thief: Bob Dylan’s Favorite Hasidic Teaching]( Read it [here](. * * * [Wilderness, Solitude, and Creativity: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent’s Century-Old Meditations on Art and Life During Seven Months on a Small Alaskan Island]( Read it [here](. * * * [How to Bear Your Fear and What It Means to Love: A Tender Meditation in Ink, Watercolor, and Wonder]( Read it [here](. * * * [My God, It’s Full of Stars: Henrietta Leavitt, Edwin Hubble, and Our Human Hunger to Know the Universe (Tracy K. Smith Reads Tracy K. Smith)]( Read/watch it [here](. * * * [The Fragile Species: A Forgotten Masterpiece of Perspective on How to Live with Ourselves and Each Other]( Read it [here](. * * * [200 Years of Great Writers and Artists on the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Gardening]( Read it [here](. * * * [The Cello and the Nightingales: Beatrice Harrison and How the World’s First Fake News United Humanity in Our First Collective Empathy for Nature]( Read it [here](. * * * [How to Keep Life from Becoming a Parody of Itself: Simone de Beauvoir on the Art of Growing Older]( Read it [here](. * * * [Nina Simone’s Gum and the Shimmering Strangeness of How Art Casts Its Transcendent Spell on Us]( Read it [here](. [Dirge Without Music: Emmy Noether, Symmetry, and the Conservation of Energy (Amanda Palmer Reads Edna St. Vincent Millay, Animated by Sophie Blackall)]( Read it [here](. * * * [The Log from the Sea of Cortez: John Steinbeck’s Forgotten Masterpiece on How to Think and the Art of Seeing the Pattern Beyond the Particular]( Read it [here](. * * * [How to Be Un-Dead: Anaïs Nin and D.H. Lawrence on the Key to Living Fully]( Read it [here](. * * * [Storytelling and the Art of Tenderness: Olga Tokarczuk’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech]( Read it [here](. * * * [The Milky Way, the Pond, and the Meaning of Life: Thoreau on Solitude, Sympathy, and the Salve for Melancholy]( Read it [here](. * * * [M.C. Escher on Loneliness, Creativity, and How Rachel Carson Inspired His Art, with a Side of Bach]( Read it [here](. * * * [The Dandelion and the Meaning of Life: G.K. Chesterton on How to Dig for the “Submerged Sunrise of Wonder”]( Read it [here](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( on Facebook]( donating=loving Every month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For sixteen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now]( [Give Now]( Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 Need to cancel an existing donation? (It's okay — life changes course. I treasure your kindness and appreciate your support for as long as it lasted.) You can do so [on this page](. IN ATOMS: [Creative Mornings (January 13, NYC)]( [Creative Mornings]( — the world's largest face-to-face creative community — is a free breakfast lecture series taking place once a month in more than 200 cities around the world, run entirely by volunteers: free breakfast, free coffee, and a free lecture by a member of the local creative community. On January 13, I will be breaking my five-year sabbatical from talks and speaking at the New York chapter on the month's theme — Sanctuary — with live music by the inimitable [Joan As Police Woman](. Join us. DATE: January 13, 2023 TIME: doors 8:30AM, performance 9AM LOCATION: The New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 W 64th Street, New York, NY 10023 [INFO + TICKETS]( [---]( You're receiving this email because you subscribed on TheMarginalian.org (formerly BrainPickings.org). 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