These two situations have more in common than you think: both require us to rethink everything — from our daily schedules, to our sources of meaning and purpose.

We’re going to talk about how to find meaning and purpose, in an era in which super-intelligence threatens to take over our tasks — and at a time of life when our customary tasks often fall away, and we need to reinvent ourselves.

And don’t worry if you can’t make it live. We’ll send out a video recording to paid and scholarship subscribers next week.

Here are your log-in instructions:

Read more

“When strangers are randomly assigned to go straight to deep talk rather than small talk, they have a better vibe and end up feeling happier and closer than expected. Although extraverts and introverts get the same joy out of going deep, it gives introverts a bigger boost in connection.”

So says — organizational psychologist, #1 New York Times bestselling author of 6 books that have sold millions of copies, and friend of The Quiet Life.

In his brand new book, VIBE: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, Adam teaches how both introverts and extroverts can accelerate connection - even with people they’ve just met.

Adam has graciously offered to share an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the book with us, focusing on how to develop a meaningful connection within one minute of meeting someone — by learning the secrets of deep talk.

Here’s Adam, from his book Vibe:

“I’m watching over a hundred students fidget nervously. It’s the second week of class, and I’ve just paired each of them up with someone they’ve never met. They have one minute to see if they can vibe.

That’s the only instruction I give them. When I shout, “Go!” no one says a word. They just sit there, frozen, until a brave soul finally pierces the uncomfortable silence with pleasantries. Then the voices swell into a cacophony. I can’t make out any sounds or read their lips.

Later, I ask them to close their eyes and raise their hands if they’ve managed to form a strong connection. More than three quarters of the hands shoot up. Since then, I’ve done this exercise with thousands of people. It doesn’t matter where you live or how old you are. In just 60 seconds, the right ritual can light a spark.

This activity was created by my mentor Jane Dutton, a leading expert on high‑quality connections. We’ve both run it with people of all ages, and they’re usually stunned by their capacity to click with strangers in only one minute. They don’t know they have an intuitive understanding of how to talk their way to different wavelengths.

Some pairs look for compatible needs or goals. What’s your biggest challenge right now? Others search for shared passions and hobbies. What’s your ideal way to spend a weekend? The most frequent and surprising approach, though, is to dive right into the deep end. What role does love play in your life?

There have been many studies about how to accelerate closeness. In the most famous experiments, after just 45 minutes of conversation, strangers end up feeling a strong connection—and maybe even falling in love. This “fast friends” procedure starts with fairly benign questions. Would you like to be famous? How would you describe a perfect day? Then the questions get increasingly personal and intense. When did you last cry? How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

These studies show that short, emotionally intense conversations with strangers can foster strong connections. It takes less time than we expect to advance from small talk to deep talk. But it’s possible to skip the small talk altogether. That’s what my students have learned in the rapid high‑quality connection exercise. The short window of time—plus the knowledge that they share the motivation to bond—gives them permission to be vulnerable and go deep right away.

Sure enough, when strangers are randomly assigned to go straight to deep talk rather than small talk, they have a better vibe and end up feeling happier and closer than expected. Although extraverts and introverts get the same joy out of going deep, it gives introverts a bigger boost in connection.

It’s true that if you botch deep talk, you sometimes end up with no talk. Yet these fears are mostly misguided. An analysis of 57 experiments demonstrated that people actually like us better when we show some vulnerability—it displays our humanity and signals that we trust them. My own research has shown that when we disclose a flaw, admit a mistake, or reveal some genuine emotion, others tend to respond favorably.

What moves the needle is a disruptive disclosure: an unexpected communication that leads us to rethink our assumptions about a relationship. By jolting us out of our existing rituals, it can alter the trajectory of our interactions.

A disruptive disclosure is not a license to trauma dump. A trauma dump is when people pour out their pain without seeking consent or showing concern for the listener’s boundaries and well‑being. It’s unfiltered and self‑centered, and it can send the listener running in the opposite direction. A healthy disclosure is different. It involves bounded vulnerability. You’re revealing your humanity without being dysregulated or demanding support. As psychologist Susan David captured it for me, “Share from your scars, not from your wounds.”

One of the best disruptive disclosures I’ve ever seen was on a college tour with my daughter Joanna. We were trudging through muddy piles of melting snow, but she hardly noticed because she was absorbed in a conversation with our tour guide, Natalie.

As they discussed the sense of community on campus, Natalie said she had a story that would bring it to life: “A few months ago, my grandma died. Don’t worry—I’m okay. This isn’t a story about me; I want to tell you how people here showed up for me.” Natalie was amazed by the care that her friends displayed. For weeks, they reached out to her multiple times a day. They didn’t tell her until much later, but they’d created a group chat to coordinate their check‑ins and let her know that she wasn’t alone. Natalie divulged something personal without seeming needy or burdening us.

That’s what made it a beautiful disruptive disclosure. The topic was vulnerable, but she didn’t burst into tears or pressure us to console her. She shared her experience and signaled to Joanna that she could be real too.”

*

Okay, this is Susan again.

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt as much as I did. I loved Adam’s ideas for conversational gambits that launch us straight into deep talk.

I’ll recap some of them here, so you have them in one place:

What’s your biggest challenge right now?

What’s your ideal way to spend a weekend?

What role does love play in your life?

Would you like to be famous?

How would you describe a perfect day?

When did you last cry?

How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

Granted, some of these feel more appropriate for some situations than others. But I think they give a great idea of how to bypass small talk altogether.

*

How about you? Would you like to share with us:

*A time when you made an immediate connection with someone — and what made it happen?

*How you avoid small talk and move into deep conversation?

*Whether you think it’s possible to LEARN how to make a good connection, or whether you see it as a natural talent?

We always love to hear from you! Please, comment below, and feel free to share this Kindred Letter if you found it helpful:

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In our next Candlelight Chat, we’re going to focus on two seemingly unrelated topics: AI; and the Second Half of Life.

These two situations have more in common than you think: both require us to rethink everything — from our daily schedules, to our sources of meaning and purpose.

We’re going to talk about how to find meaning and purpose, in an era in which super-intelligence threatens to take over our tasks — and at a time of life when our customary tasks often fall away, and we need to reinvent ourselves.

Please join us this Sunday, on Zoom, from 1-2 pm ET!

We’ll send log-in instructions this Saturday. To participate, you must be a paid or scholarship member of The Quiet Life. Members can participate either live, or by watching the video replay, which we’ll send the following week.

Our guest will be Dr. Diane Hamilton — a behavioral expert, author, and keynote speaker whose work focuses on curiosity, perception, and what gives people a sense of purpose. Her forthcoming book, ADAPTIVE CURIOSITY: How Humans Find Purpose in the Age of Intelligent Machines, introduces four paths to meaning: exploration, connection, creation, and influence. Through these paths, readers can better understand what gives them purpose — and how to continue growing as the world changes around them. While AI provides the backdrop, the book addresses a much larger human question: How do we continue to find fulfillment, contribute to others, and remain curious throughout our lives?

*As usual, we’ll also invite you to ask your questions of Dr. Hamilton. You’ll be able to talk to her either via the written chat, or by “raising your hand” and coming online to chat with her.

I really hope you join us!

As always, you can start leaving your questions for Dr. Hamilton below. And you can pre-order her new book here.

Can’t wait to see you Sunday!

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—

If you love books, this one’s for you — one of my favorite essays, on English Literature, by , which you should definitely read on his “Cultural Capital” Substack.

It begins like this:

“English literature — so it seemed to me when I was a bookish zealot of eighteen — was the prince of the humanities. When I was interviewed at university and asked why exactly I wanted to study English, I informed my interrogators (I still remember the phrase which I had practised beforehand and considered richly impressive) that “literature shows us what it is or might be to be human”. I believed it.

In books, I felt with Tennyson, that I had sensed the living souls of the dead flashed on mine. Poems — especially poems by Hopkins, Eliot and Auden — worked on me like spells. I had contrived to download a recording of Auden’s Museé des Beaux Arts onto my primitive mobile phone, and would stand in the playground with the device pressed to my ear, enraptured by the tinny incantation, convinced I was responding to a higher call. Literature, if one were to reduce it to anything so tawdry as a formula, was history x philosophy x life. I regarded my peers who had chosen to study mere facts at university rather than to be inducted into the glamorous mysteries of the human heart with some pity (an attitude I have still not entirely shaken off)…”

Marriott’s essay continues here. Hopefully you’ll love it too.

I must say that I deeply relate to Marriott’s line above, about preferring the “glamorous mysteries of the human heart” to the study of “mere facts.”

But it’s also true that these days I’m just as likely (more likely?) to plumb those mysteries via studying psychology rather than reading literature.

In fact, I’m soon to start a formal certificate in depth psychology - the study of the psyche and the unconscious, via mythology, story, symbol and dream. More soon on that - I’m excited to share my learnings with you.

(In the meantime, if this description appeals to you, I highly recommend the “This Jungian Life” podcast - whose hosts were our Candlelight Chat guests not too long ago!)

*

What about you: what’s your preference - facts or mysteries?

And, if you could go back to school, what would you study?

Psychology, literature, or something else?

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“I am so energized by the beauty of someone like Madison’s mind.”

That text came from one of our sons. He’s reading The Federalist Papers in school, specifically Federalist #10, by James Madison, and he’s fallen in intellectual love. Ken and I are getting torrents of texts like this, exclaiming over his reading.

But it was the quote that I shared with you above that really got me: the one where he expresses his appreciation for the beauty and excellence of the mind of a man he’ll never meet.

I felt proud of him because he was exhibiting a character strength that our society doesn’t celebrate much. We’re encouraged to do, create, and achieve things ourselves; appreciating the talents of others feels like a nice thing to do - but not exactly a strength. Yet positive psychologists believe that this is in fact a very important character trait. They call it the “Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence.”

Would you like to know what YOUR top three character strengths are, and how best to use them?

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Thank you so much if you came out for our very special Candlelight Chat on September 20 with , the renowned social psychologist, bestselling author of PRESENCE, giver of wildly popular TED talks, and now…author of a hotly anticipated new book, BULLIED: on how bullying hijacked our culture - and how social bravery can change it. Amy is also warm, welcoming, charming, and brilliant. You’ll see what I mean, when you watch the video.

We talked about Amy’s own story of how she was professionally bullied (to the point of suicidality) - and everything she’s learned since then.

We also discussed:

• My own experience as a ten-year-old who witnessed bullying — and what bystanders can do to make a difference.

• Why bullying is never one person’s doing — and how you can intervene early.

• How campaigns of cruelty unfold—from the first small test to the target’s disappearance.

• The surprising science showing how a small minority can change an entire culture.

• How social bravery is best practiced together — not risked alone.

If you missed the Candlelight Chat — or want to experience it again — here you go. I hope you love it.

Read more

One piece of advice that’s rattled around the Internet lately is that we should stop caring what other people think, by remembering the “Spotlight Effect” - the idea that other people are far too busy obsessing about their own lives to pay attention to yours. We may feel that we’re in the spotlight, but mostly that’s in our own heads.

At first I found this idea quite helpful. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s not quite right. Because — while it’s true that we’re all preoccupied by our own life and times — it’s also true that others DO notice and judge us, both consciously and unconsciously. This is what we humans are evolutionarily designed to do. We evaluate each other’s warmth and competence - as ’s research has long shown.

I would add that this advice on the Spotlight Effect is especially incomplete for sensitive people, who tend to be acutely aware of all that noticing and judging.

So, here are nine things we should do instead - including a practical exercise that you can do, quickly and easily, whenever you feel judged or embarrassed:

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We recently dropped one of our sons at college, and officially became “empty nesters”.

The house does feel overly quiet and empty, as advertised.

On the way home, I had a few moments of nausea, which is my characteristic response to grief.

But for the most part we’ve been pleased — my husband Ken and I feel infinitely proud of our kids, and happy for them, and delighted by hearing about their new adventures.

And we’re turning to each other more.

Last night I dreamed that we were enrolling together as freshmen at my own alma mater, and that Ken loved the campus — because there was a river running through it.

Rivers, of course, represent the flow of time, and boundaries between worlds, and thresholds from one state of being to another.

And this river didn’t just appear at the edge of campus, the way rivers usually do in real life. This river RAN THROUGH the campus. In other words – this transitional state we’re in is not peripheral to our new stage; it’s fundamental to it.

The dream could have shown us graduating together, but it didn’t. We were freshmen.

*

Sometimes I can’t get over the extent to which our dreams speak in deeply known and ancient symbols.

And how, despite our “dream-makers” speaking to us, night after night, in this powerful language, we rarely take the time to listen to them.

Our dreams really are, as Freud said, the “royal road to the unconscious.”

Given how much wisdom and revelation they contain, the extent to which we tend to ignore them is incomprehensible.

(You might want to check out this past Kindred Letter on How to Interpret Your Dreams:

Have you had an evocative and deeply telling dream recently?

I’d love to hear. (This is not an idle question — it relates to my next big project, about which more soonish. Suffice it to say that it’s no coincidence that my dream was situated at my alma mater — because I am going back to school.)

Please do share!

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P.S. If you’d like to leave a comment or read the comments of others, do consider becoming a member of The Quiet Life.

(And, as always, if finances are too tight, just write to us at hello@thequietlife.net about our partial and fully paid scholarship memberships. No one should be deterred for lack of funds.)

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I’m really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, for our next Candlelight Chat!

This one’s for you, if you’ve even been bullied — or stood by while others were bullied, wishing you could find the courage to intervene.

We’re very honored to host special guest , renowned social psychologist, bestselling author of PRESENCE, giver of wildly popular TED talks, and now…author of a hotly anticipated new book, BULLIED: on how bullying hijacked our culture - and how social bravery can change it.

Amy is also warm, welcoming, charming, and — as you’ll see for yourself — brilliant. She’s been a good friend of mine for years and I’m very excited to bring her to you.

Amy will tell you her own story of how she was professionally bullied (to the point of suicidality) - and everything she’s learned since then.

Here are just a few of the topics we’ll discuss with Amy:

• Why bullying is never one person’s doing—and how every response, including no response, shapes the outcome.

• How a campaign of cruelty unfolds—from the first small test to the target’s disappearance.

• Why we struggle to believe what we’re seeing—and what that delay hands the bully.

• The surprising science showing how a small minority can change an entire culture.

• How social bravery becomes something practiced together—not risked alone.

As usual, we’ll also invite you to ask your questions of Amy. You’ll be able to talk to her either via the written chat, or by “raising your hand” and coming online to chat with her.

Also as usual, please have a candle handy, but don’t light it yet. We’ll do that together.

And don’t worry if you can’t make it live. We’ll send out a video recording to paid and scholarship subscribers next week.

Here are your log-in instructions:

Read more

*Have you ever been bullied?

*Have you ever wondered how ordinary people become part of extraordinary cruelty?

*Have you ever stood by while others were bullied, wishing you could find the courage to intervene?

If so, you’re going to love our next Candlelight Chat guest!

Amy Cuddy is a renowned social psychologist, bestselling author of PRESENCE, giver of wildly popular TED talks, and now…author of a hotly anticipated new book, BULLIED: on how bullying hijacked our culture - and how social bravery can change it.

Amy is also warm, welcoming, charming, and — as you’ll see for yourself — brilliant. She’s been a good friend of mine for years and I’m very excited to bring her to you.

Amy will tell you her own story of how she was professionally bullied (to the point of suicidality) - and everything she’s learned since then.

*
Please join us this Sunday, on Zoom, from 1-2 pm ET.

We’ll send log-in instructions this Saturday. To participate, you must be a paid or scholarship member of The Quiet Life. Members can participate either live, or by watching the video replay, which we’ll send the following week.

Subscribe now

We’ll also talk about:

• Why bullying is never one person’s doing—and how every response, including no response, shapes the outcome.

• How a campaign of cruelty unfolds—from the first small test to the target’s disappearance.

• Why we struggle to believe what we’re seeing—and what that delay hands the bully.

• The surprising science showing how a small minority can change an entire culture.

• How social bravery becomes something practiced together—not risked alone.

As usual, we’ll also invite you to ask your questions of Amy. You’ll be able to talk to her either via the written chat, or by “raising your hand” and coming online to chat with her.

I really hope you join us!

If you’re not already a Quiet Life member, sign up here to get the log-in instructions for this Candlelight Chat (or to watch the replay later)!

Subscribe now

As always, you can start leaving your questions for Amy below. And you can pre-order Amy’s new book here.

Can’t wait to see you Sunday!

Leave a comment

Hello! As promised, here is the next edition of our new travel series, for seekers of Quiet, Depth, and Beauty. Coming soon: editions on London, Oxford, the San Francisco Bay Area, and a much overlooked Caribbean island. (The recently did a post on Paris, courtesy of , which you should also check out!)

But before we dive into guides to specific cities, I thought I’d lay out my own approach to travel - a kind of manifesto for traveling introverts.

Be a flâneur. The best way to see a city is on foot. (If you are lucky to have the physical capacity to walk for hours, use it while you can!) But the term flâneur also captures a psychological position that resonates for many introverts:

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Thank you so much to those of you who came out for our Candlelight Chat last Sunday with Kate Bowler, bestselling author of Joyful, Anyway. Kate is a being of grace, humor and poetry, and it was a rare treat to spend time with her. You’ll see what I mean, when you watch the video.

We talked about:

• Kate’s years of living with incurable cancer (since age 35 - she was given months to live just when she’d felt that her life was “coming together”) and how she found joy throughout

• Her father’s crippling depression all through Kate’s childhood — and their enduringly close relationship

• How to feel joy, whether or not your life is going well.

• The difference between happiness and joy.

• Kate’s admissions that she is full of resentment (which is especially interesting, given her natural kindness, warmth and cheer)

• Why “the ache” that we all feel is, in Kate’s view, a holy engine

• and much more.

If you missed the Candlelight Chat — or want to experience it again — here you go. I hope you love it.

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First of all, thanks sooo much to those of you who came out for our Candlelight Chat this Sunday with , bestselling author of Joyful, Anyway. We talked about Kate’s years of living with incurable cancer, her father’s crippling depression all through Kate’s childhood and their enduringly close relationship — and how to feel joy, whether or not your life is going well.

Kate is a being of grace, humor and poetry, and it was a rare treat to spend time with her.

If you missed it, fear not! We will send all Quiet Life members the video replay in a few days, and you can watch it as many times as you like!

Today, I want to share with you one of my favorite poems: “Fern Hill”, by Dylan Thomas. I was reminded of it by a guy named Cian McCarthy, who notes that this poem is “such poignant reading as we stand on the cusp of early Autumn.” We are all growing older, the seasons remind us, even when we’re young.

I hope you find this poem as incalculably beautiful as I do. And if you feel, at first, that you can’t understand exactly what Dylan Thomas is saying, try to just relax into the words and images, and the meaning will come through loud and clear: especially the glorious final stanza, which gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I read it.

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

Here, too, is a wonderful meditation on the poem, from America magazine, by Jayme Stayer:

“To understand this poem, you don’t need biography [of Thomas]. Your own personal understanding of the loss of innocence and the pain of mortality serve just as well as Thomas’s disastrous attempts at adulting. But to understand how this poem and a few others avoid the pitfalls of his other work, the biographical background is illuminating.

The context that matters is not that Thomas spent summers as a child on a farm—any decent artist could have invented such a childhood. The more relevant context is the yawning gap between the child and the adult. Thomas’s youthful summers were idyllic, and his adult fall was low and sordid: alcoholism, adultery, financial insecurity, emotional instability, professional uncertainty, neglected responsibilities. Observing that gap, he feels the pain of lost innocence more than any stable adult might feel it. “Fern Hill” is an aching cry that turns both the observation and the feeling to artistic account, creating a childhood that is too perfect to be believed. When he is plumbing his own grief and nostalgia, rather than posing as an oracle, Thomas strikes the true lyric note, singing in his chains like the sea.”

*Did you love this poem too? Which are your favorite lines?

(For me, there are so many of them. But “the sabbath rang slowly/In the pebbles of the holy streams” is just a marvel. And “the whinnying green stable” and the “fields of praise”….and then the “farm forever fled from the childless land” - OMG.)

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I’m really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, for our next Candlelight Chat!

This one’s for you, if you’re interested in the idea of experiencing joy, whether or not your life is going well.

We’re very honored to host special guest Kate Bowler, Duke professor; host of the critically acclaimed podcast, Everything Happens; and author of seven books, including the instant bestselling book, Joyful, Anyway.

Here are just a few of the topics we’ll discuss with Kate:

• Kate’s experience with cancer

• How to feel joy even when life isn’t going well

• The self-help and wellness industry

• Resentment, sadness and barriers to joy

• and much more.

As usual, we’ll also invite you to ask your questions of Kate. You’ll be able to talk to her either via the written chat, or by “raising your hand” and coming online to chat with her.

Also as usual, please have a candle handy, but don’t light it yet. We’ll do that together.

And don’t worry if you can’t make it live. We’ll send out a video recording to paid and scholarship subscribers next week.

Here are your log-in instructions:

Read more

Okay you’re going to love our next Candlelight Chat guest.

If you aren’t already familiar with the wise and hilarious Kate Bowler, I’m going to let her introduce herself to you in her own words:

“Writer. Professor. Small talk survivor.

I am a Duke professor, podcaster, and author with a single mission: giving you permission to feel human. (And letting you have whatever weird or boring hobbies you can’t explain to strangers. Do I love roadside attractions and exotic potato chip flavors? Yes. More than I should say.)

I believe that the world would be a gentler place if we took apart the well-meaning clichés we use when life is hard. (What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Maybe what doesn’t kill you might try again tomorrow. 🙂 )

I am determined to create a gentler world for everyone who wants to admit that they are not always “living their best life.” After years of being told I was incurable, I was declared cancer-free. But there’s no going back. I am forever changed by what I discovered: life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone. And while we can’t always be happy, we can be joyful, anyway.”

We’ll be discussing Kate’s life and times and new book, Joyful, Anyway, including:

*Kate’s experience with cancer

*How to feel joy even when life isn’t going well

*The self-help and wellness industry

*Resentment, sadness and barriers to joy

and much more.

*
If these topics (and Kate’s unique way of being in the world) resonate, this Sunday’s Candlelight Chat is for you. Please join us on Zoom, from 1-2 pm ET. We’ll send log-in instructions this Saturday. To participate, you must be a paid or scholarship member of The Quiet Life. Members can participate either live, or by watching the video replay, which we’ll send the following week.

As usual, we’ll also invite you to ask your questions of Kate. You’ll be able to talk to her either via the written chat, or by “raising your hand” and coming online to chat with her.

I really hope you join us!

Subscribe now

Have you ever wished for a guide to one of the world’s great travel destinations — Paris — from the POV of introverts?

That’s what I’m excited to bring you today, with this guide to Paris, from Jo Piazza, author of THE PARISIAN HEIST. This travel guide first appeared at the Silent Book Club, an organization you might also like to check out!:

*

But first! As a parent of two amazing teen boys, I’m very happy to announce that today’s Kindred Letter is sponsored by Ten Speed Press, publisher of The Success Trap: How the Pressure to Stand Out Is Fueling Anxiety, Depression, and Burnout in Teens—and the Fundamental Fix They Deserve.

This crucial new investigation into the teen mental health epidemic reveals how rising expectations in school, extracurriculars, and daily life have driven unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression. Dr. Stuart Slavin offers thoughtful, practical guidance for parents, educators – and students – to help redefine what true success looks like: not just achievement, but mentally resilient, healthy, and happy teens.

You can learn more here!

Learn more about the book

And now, here’s Jo Piazza. Jo is a bestselling author, podcast host, mom, travel writer, and introvert.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Paris over the past few years while I’ve been working on The Parisian Heist. Most of that time was spent researching, some writing (I still write 1500 words a day even when I travel) and some just wandering in search of inspiration or to let my mind gather up the tiny details it needs for sparks of creativity.

My favorite places in the city (besides anywhere I can eat cheese) tend to be the ones where I can alternate between reading a book and looking at interesting things.

My favorite bookstore in Paris is actually a used bookstore tucked inside the concept shop Merci, which also happens to be one of my favorite stores on the planet. Concept shop seems to mean a store that sells everything from soap to sneakers to curtains to candles in the shape of food.

I’ve spent entire days there, alternating between browsing the books (almost all of them in French….I like to look at the covers), sitting down to write, and strolling through the rest of the store.

I do something similar at the Musée d’Orsay, where my favorite place to post up is Le Restaurant, their wildly beautiful dining room with chandeliers, gilded ceilings, and murals overhead. I like to wander through the museum, stop for lunch and a perfect cheese plate, read or write for a while, and then go back to wandering among the art.

The Red Wheelbarrow is my favorite English-language bookstore in Paris. I like to grab a book there and then take it to the Luxembourg Gardens across the street to read in the grass and people watch.

When I need more caffeine I head to Maison Fleuret, a literary coffee shop. It’s tucked inside an old bookstore (that dates back to 1872) in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. You can have coffee, eat one of the best croissants in Paris, and surround yourself with books. If you like their pastries they also offer baking classes which I love taking in Paris because they give my brain something new to learn.

Near Shakespeare and Company, the Bistro des Livres combines books and food. It’s a perfect place to gaze at the line at Shakespeare and decide if you’re willing to brave it. But here’s a pro tip. You don’t have to. The line has gotten completely out of control as the bookstore has become more popular with influencers. But if you order a book ahead of time for pickup you can skip the line.

I am also obsessed with wandering around the Museum of Hunting and Nature in the Marais when I need a break from words. It is one of the strangest and most wonderful museums in Paris, filled with art and taxidermy and beautiful rooms that make you feel like you’ve stumbled into a mad person’s very eccentric house.

When the sun starts to go down there is a hidden bar called Bar À Bulles behind the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre with a rooftop garden and a gorgeous view of the windmill. It is weirdly not touristy, especially on a weeknight, and an absolute delight for a reading spot with a drink.

One of my favorite nighttime restaurants is Le Bon Georges for a solo dinner outside, preferably in the fall when they give you cozy blankets. They make a perfect steak poivre and serve you vats of chocolate mousse and rice pudding.

So this is my Paris prescription, buy a book, find somewhere beautiful to sit with it, order something delicious, wander around for a while, and repeat. Paris is one of the best cities in the world for being alone in public, which is frankly the greatest luxury an introverted writer can ask for.”

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I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

*Would you like to see more such travel guides for seekers of Quiet, Depth and Beauty?

*What was your favorite of Jo’s picks?

*If you know Paris well or have visited, do you have other spots to share? I haven’t been to Paris for decades and would love to hear your recs.

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I’m fascinated by one particular aspect of the human condition, and based on your many many letters and comments over the many many years, I suspect that you share this fascination too.

The poet Federico Garcia Lorca called this aspect the “mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains.”

So today we’re going to talk about duende - a feeling for the mysterious and profound mix of darkness and joy that’s the secret ingredient of all love songs, and of all love itself.

We’re also going to talk about the most important thing you should do, if you’re a person who senses this mysterious power - and its ability to deliver you to a richer, deeper form of happiness.

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In the age of machines, what makes life worth living?

“If we are not to become ever more diminished as humans, we need to remain in control of machines, not come under their control. I am not talking about an apocalyptic future; I am talking about apocalypse now.”

As I’ve mentioned, lately I’ve been reading the work of the great author and psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist. Today, I thought I’d share this crucial and lovely bit with you here, from his 2024 essay, “Resist the Machine Apocalypse”.

“No two ways about it: We are making ourselves wretched. We are more affluent than ever, but riches — and power, the only point in having riches — do not make people happy. Ask a psychiatrist. Or take a look at the face of Vladimir Putin, who has, alas, the power of life and death over millions of people and is the owner of the most expensive toilet-paper dispenser in the world. No, affluent as we are, we are also more anxious, depressed, lonely, isolated, and lacking in purpose than ever. Why is this? I suggest it is because we no longer have the foggiest idea what human life is about [emphasis added]. Indeed, there is a sense in which we no longer live in a world at all, but exist in a simulacrum of our own making.

Leaving nuance aside, and condensing three decades of research and a vast body of supporting evidence into a phrase: We are now mesmerized by the least intelligent part of the human brain. For reasons of survival, one hemisphere of the brain, the left, has evolved over millions of years to favor manipulation — grabbing, getting, and controlling — while the other, the right, has been tasked with understanding the whole picture. So conflicting are these goals that in humans the hemispheres are largely sequestered, one from the other. Our seeming ability these days to hear only what comes from the left hemisphere does not arise from the brain’s having changed radically in the last couple of centuries, though it is indeed always evolving. It’s more like this: You buy a radio set, and you soon find a couple of channels worth listening to. After a while, you find yourself listening to only one. It’s not the radio set that has changed; it’s you. In the case of the brain, it would not matter so much if we had settled on the intelligent channel-but we didn’t. We settled on the one whose value has nothing to do with truth, or with courage, magnanimity, or generosity, but only with greed, grabbing, and getting. Manipulation….

What makes life worth living is what can only be called resonance: the encounter with other living beings, with the natural world, and with the greatest products of the human soul — some would say, with the cosmos at large, or with God. Only in encountering the uncontrollable do we experience the world in its depth and complexity and come fully alive. The resonance we enjoy in a real relationship with a sentient other is not possible where there is no freedom, no spontaneity, no life. If we are not to become ever more diminished as humans, we need to remain in control of machines, not come under their control. I am not talking about an apocalyptic future; I am talking about apocalypse now. We are already calmly and quietly surrendering our liberty, our privacy, our dignity, our time, our values, and our talents to the machine. Machines serve us well when they relieve us of drudgery, but we must leave human affairs to humans. If not, we sign our own death warrant.”

The above is from a 2024 essay by Iain McGilchrist, called “Resist the Machine Apocalypse.” You can read the rest on McGilchist’s wonderful site.

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And for today’s prompts, I ask you:

*Where do you most experience what McGilchrist calls “resonance” - with (as he puts it) other living beings, the natural world, or “the greatest products of the human soul”)?

*What are the parts of your life that you most want to guard from AI/machine takeover?

*What aspects of your life have been improved — or diminished — by tech?

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Today’s Kindred Letter is on an especially important topic: the decline of the Humanities, and how to reverse it. If you’re a fellow devotee of art, literature, poetry, mythology …please consider sharing.

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As an English major in the 1980s, I was so lucky to attend a university whose commitment to wisdom seemed to match the promise of its soaring architecture. It was the end of an era, though I didn’t know it yet – the era in which universities were temples where many of us went to pray, where we went searching for awe and wonder and the far reaches of the human soul. In the late ’80s, books – our beautiful, sacred books – were starting to be viewed as mere “texts” to be “interrogated”. But this view, so curiously disrespectful of literature, seemed still a sideline; I had no idea that it — along with the growing primacy of pre-professional majors, and students’ legitimate worries about making a living — would soon eat up the Humanities departments.

During the last decade, the number of Humanities majors nationwide dropped by a third, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. On campus, everyone knows that it’s the STEM and business subjects that get the shiny new buildings and the fiercest competition from hopeful applicants.

Universities are taking various steps to address some of these problems.

But what we really need, I believe, is a new vision for the humanities: one I call Sacred Humanism.

The true purpose of the Humanities is to help us understand the human condition, and each other, and to quench our thirst for meaning, depth, beauty and truth. We need to teach poetry, literature, art and history not only as texts to critique -- but as gateways to the sacred. We need to develop in students a character strength that positive psychologists call the “Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence” (which is a secular, and rather muted, way of saying spiritual awe) -- and which is a fundamentally constructive rather than deconstructive impulse. We should emphasize that which gives us chills, reverence, and consolation.

Studies by the psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Dacher Keltner, and others, show that awe is linked to lower stress and inflammation, higher life satisfaction, generosity and empathy. If the Humanities departments were to place awe at the center of their mission, the students might return -- not to satisfy curricular requirements, but out of spiritual hunger.

Students once flooded the mythologist Joseph Campbell’s classes at Sarah Lawrence College, because he taught them myth and meaning and the art of living a good life; more recently, the Northwestern University literature professor Gary Saul Morson’s classes on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky draw standing ovations for similar reasons. These examples point the way forward for Sacred Humanism.

In contrast, since the 1950s, the prevailing worldview in U.S. academia was “Secular Humanism.” Secular humanism emphasizes reason and ethics while rejecting dogma, supernaturalism, and authoritarianism. This philosophy was, in part, a response to the barbarisms of the 20th century. As a lifelong atheist and now agnostic, who is allergic to dogma and utopianism, I’ve long admired this view, and still do.

But too often Secular Humanism saw the spiritual impulse as a narrow experience shared by a credulous few, rather than a deep yearning that animates us all — and so the thirst for wisdom and elevation gave way to analyses of power dynamics.

Such inquiries are not without value; it’s useful to analyze, say, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” from, say, the perspective of women’s role in society. But no one fell in love with “Pearl Earring” as a statement on patriarchy. They fell in love with its luminosity. They beheld it and wanted to know where this kind of sensitivity and insight comes from, and what they could do to embody it themselves, and inspire it in others. They wanted depth, they wanted solace, they wanted to nourish their souls.

The deepest purpose of poetry and art is to show us what transcendence – the ecstatic apprehension of the world beyond the self -- feels like. In the Humanities, you can study mythology, to explore the depths of the human psyche, around the world, across the centuries. You can study history because if it doesn’t repeat then at least it rhymes, and maybe we’ll get something right next time. You can read literature, to know that humans two thousand years ago experienced the same exact thing you felt last week when you broke up with your boyfriend.

None of this requires adherence to a particular religion, or to any religion. But it does make room for it. And it makes room for the experience of awe that uplifts us all, and brings us together -- whether we’re atheists, believers, or somewhere in between.

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As always, I would love to hear from you, if you’re so inclined.

*Does the phrase/idea of “Sacred Humanism” resonate with you?

*Can you think of a work of art, poetry, literature, mythology, that inspires awe in you?

*If we lose the Humanities altogether, what do you think we lose? If we succeed in restoring them to their former glory, what do you think we gain?

Please do leave a comment below! And, if you have a friend or colleague who you think would like to hear about Sacred Humanism, please do share this Kindred Letter.

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© Susan Cain

Last week, 400 people joined us for a live event with , who’s a writer and also a maestro of how to work and thrive on Substack. I highly recommend her Substack!

And, if you missed our conversation, the video replay is below!

We discussed:

*How and why I write my “newsletters” (I really dislike that word) as Kindred Letters;

*How to love your writing life;

*Envy and jealousy of other writers;

*The magic of our Quiet Life Candlelight Chats;

*Why “vibe” is the word of 2026;

*and more.

You can watch here!

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