JW: Mentor: Maria Popova, The Marginalian

 

Plaque found at Casa de Maria, Montecito, CA

It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally recognizing Maria Popova as the mentor she has been for more years than I remember. She sends me, and the world, weekly enlightenment and never asks for recompense, although she will accept tokens of appreciation. In most part, we share common interests so I'm always refreshed by her take on life.

Maria culls the wisdom of past and current teachers and spins a web that folds them into a vibrating harmony that touches minds and spirits. When choosing content for Brain Pickings (now The Marginalian), she asks herself three things:

• Is it interesting enough to leave the reader with something – a thought, an idea, a question – after the immediate fulfillment of the self-contained reading or viewing experience?
• Is it evergreen in a way that makes it just as interesting in a month or a year?
• Am I able to provide enough additional context – historical background, related past articles, complementary reading or viewing material – or build a pattern around it to make it worth for the reader?

I don't know what Maria might think about The Hero's Journey, but what seems important is the way she weaves thoughts and conversations together, one perspective leading to another. Her topics and interests flow out of life, providing a broad playing field with room for a wide variety of facts, opinions, and connections.

This process creates a pathway with dozens of optional twists and turns. A path more like a branching tree, actually more like its roots, some thick, many fine, all delivering nourishment to the receiving tree. I want to follow that model of endless connection, receiving gratefully, growing strong and wise, networking and sharing with all my neighbors, creating a sheltering and embracing forest.

This morning, Maria introduced me to Nick Cave's new book on the art of growing older and his music. In a few short paragraphs, she linked his thoughts to Elizabeth Peabody, who coined the term transcendentalism and who says, “The perilous season is middle age, when a false wisdom tempts them to doubt the divine origin of the dreams of their youth.”

And to Simone de Beauvoir who observed: “In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves.”

And to Pema Chödrön’s insight that "only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us."

And to Bertrand Russell who says, "make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life."

From Cave, she quotes:

We’re often led to believe that getting older is in itself somehow a betrayal of our idealistic younger self, but sometimes I think it might be the other way around. Maybe the younger self finds it difficult to inhabit its true potential because it has no idea what that potential is. It is a kind of unformed thing running scared most of the time, frantically trying to build its sense of self — This is me! Here I am! — in any way that it can. But then time and life come along, and smash that sense of self into a million pieces.  

Then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person — I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world.

I believe Maria might agree with us (as well as Joseph Campbell) that only we can determine our path; however, we are surrounded by teachers and wisdom that can guide our next step.