“Three years ago I was sitting in a cafe facing onto Ljubljana’s central square. A woman, I’m guessing in her late thirties, was sitting alone opposite me….this woman sitting on her own wore all red. For 45 minutes she just sat there with soft eyes in a chosen stillness. She smiled. ‘On special days (public holidays) I like to sit and think nothing.’
She was not touching her phone, not scrolling, not distracted, and to me, this was like sticking two fingers up to the pressure we feel to be doing something.
...what the Lady in Red really triggered was a nostalgia. Nostalgia, I was interested to learn recently, is a Greek word that means homesick.”
Ahead of our September read, we caught up with Sarah. Her life-hack? 3 pieces of dark choc for breakfast.
✌🏽”When the shit goes down we’re gonna be having a wholesome party.” - Sarah Wilson
Watch the interview here.
Life Lessons: Our 101st book - This One Wild and Precious Life:
About the book:
We live in truly overwhelming times. The climate crisis, the pandemic, AI advances, conspiracy theories, political polarisation...and the rest...have left many of us in a state of 'spiritual PTSD', feeling disconnected from one another, from our values, from our joy.
In this radical spiritual guidebook, Sarah Wilson puts on her backpack and spends three years hiking around the world - in Jordan, Cornwall, the Lake District, the Australian Outback, Japan the Sierra Nevada and beyond - to find a path through it all.
Why we chose it:
'I've encountered no other book that articulates with so much passion or clarity the unique feeling of this moment in history. This is the ideal guidebook for our long overdue journey back to nature, to each other, and to sanity in the deepest sense of the word' - Oliver Burkeman
The full RBC review:
On our Insta here.
Book runners up:
Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Sharing our life lessons together at our events
Over 120 of you joined us at our events online and in London, Bristol + Oxford, to discuss our September book.
Sarah joined us briefly from the US, along with Ilona (Co-Founder, Octopus Energy Germany) and Nick Graham (Co-founder, The Weaving Lab), to answer our questions about the ‘itches’ (How we feel about our fracturing world?) that preoccupy us, and to identify the ‘scratches’ (Our paths back to connection) we can apply in our own lives.
Life lessons you shared with us:
- Nothing good lasts forever, but nothing bad does either. Just hang out, breathe and enjoy.
- The things that scare you are the things you need to do the most.
- Confidence doesn't always come from being right. It comes from not fearing being wrong.
- In life, 3 ingredients are necessary: sunshine, a commanding view and legs aching with remembered effort.
- There's tremendous power in using the least amount of information to get a point across.
- It is not the man who has too little but the man who craves more that is poor.
- Keep your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground.
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