Tafseer Ahmad

“Imagine you began your life with all the money you’ll ever have. The instant you were born you were given one account, and anytime you’ve had to pay for something, it’s come out of that account. You don’t need to work, but everything you do costs money. Food, water, housing, and consumer goods are as expensive as ever, but now even sending an email requires some of your precious funds. Sitting quietly in a chair doing nothing costs money. Sleep costs money. Everything you encounter requires you to spend money. But the problem is this: you don’t know how much money is in the account, and when it runs dry, your life is over. If you found yourself in this circumstance, would you live in the same way? Would you do anything differently? This is a fantasy, but change one key element and it’s not far from our actual situation as human beings. Only instead of money, our one account has a limited amount of time—and we don’t know how much. It is an everyday sort of question—How should we spend our time?—but because of the brevity and uncertainty of life, it is also a profound question, and has major implications for our health and happiness”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“As an old saying goes, We are always comparing our insides to other people’s outsides.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

“Our task in life consists precisely in a form of letting go of fear and expectations, an attempt to purely give oneself to the impact of the present.”
― Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

“Spoiler alert: The good life is a complicated life. For everybody. The good life is joyful… and challenging. Full of love, but also pain. And it never strictly happens; instead, the good life unfolds, through time. It is a process. It includes turmoil, calm, lightness, burdens, struggles, achievements, setbacks, leaps forward, and terrible falls. And of course, the good life always ends in death.”
― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness