Maria Popova

You put yourself in the path of surprise and possibility.

And mostly, as you know very well, in nature, because nature is always surprising, always full of wonder.

And it is impersonal and deeply intimate at the same time, which I think are two qualities that are necessary for experiencing wonder.

Exactly.

Identities are always exclusionary.

And, you know, to me, identities and opinions are the least interesting parts of people because they're the least true.

They are mutable, but they are worn as a kind of armor or costume of personality that actually conceals what is most true.

What do we call it?

Soul or spirit or the nature, the essence of a person is never in the identities and the opinions.

And yet we live in a culture that leads with those.

Yes, and it's also kind of absurd given how little choice we've had in the bodies, brains, families, cultures, times we were born into.

We were given the vast majority of these chance variables, and then to say, this is me?

It just sounds so possessive of randomness.

That's not what I said.

I said, you must get this a lot.

And you're like, I don't get this a lot.

I had written a book seven years before.

It covered four centuries, it bridged different disciplines, and there would be these visitations from other characters who I ended up leaving out because I just couldn't, they weren't so central, but they came in with very unusual perspectives or encounters, and...

So she was one of the people left on the cutting floor of the first book, Figuring.

And for me, when things don't leave me, I know I have to go to them.