The Quiet Life with Susan Cain

The Quiet Life with Susan Cain

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The Quiet Life with Susan Cain
The Quiet Life with Susan Cain
Where are your Thin Places?
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Where are your Thin Places?

And have you allowed them to change you? (Plus, announcing an IMPROMPTU SUNDAY CANDLELIGHT CHAT about this post, in writing, TODAY!)

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Susan Cain
Jan 21, 2024
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The Quiet Life with Susan Cain
The Quiet Life with Susan Cain
Where are your Thin Places?
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man playing guitar photograph
Photo by zibik on Unsplash

I’m sending this post out this Sunday morning (ET). If you’d like to talk about it together, I’ll log on today at 4 pm ET/1 pm PT/9 pm UK, for an impromptu Sunday Candlelight Chat, in writing. We can light our candles, and type to each other, via the comments section below. Of course, you can also leave a comment at any time, whether before or after the official Candlelight Chat.

And! Reminder that our next Sunday Candlelight Chat (on Zoom) will be a week from today, Sunday Jan 28, featuring my pal, the great psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman (one of the top 1% most cited scientists in the world). We’ll talk about Abraham Maslow’s vision of “cosmic sadness,” SBK’s journey from special education student to Ivy League professor, his current incarnation as a “wild introvert,” and more. Details to come.

Also - to read a prettier version of this and all posts, pls go to thequietlife.net, to read it there.

The Quiet Life with Susan Cain is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear You,

I know you’ve felt it before.

Maybe it was the time you heard your favorite song and your heart opened -- literally, you could feel your chest cavity expanding – and you realized you were communicating in another language: the musician’s soul speaking directly to yours, speaking to all the souls, and suddenly you loved everyone, and you had no fear.

Maybe it was the time a waterfall drowned out the other sounds of the woods, drowned out the voices in your head, and you forgot yourself for a moment of bliss whose memory stayed with you forever after.

Maybe it was the time, at the height of the romance, when you thought “I’m so happy I could die.”[1]

Did you ever wonder what those feelings were?

Maybe you thought they were a nice sensation, and wouldn’t it be great if you could have more of them, and if they could last a little longer. And then you went back to everyday life.

But that’s just the doorstep to the real question.

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