What Capital City Are You?

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I have been engaging in a daily newsletter experiment for the last 10 days. I wrote a new newsletter for 7 days and now every day I rewrite the newsletter from 7 days ago. I will probably do this for a month… at least. It is exhausting but it is transformative and becoming less exhausting.

But I still love blogging and I am trying to understand what is the difference between blogging and newslettering. I do enjoy the feedback aspect of the newsletter. Every day I see people read the newsletter, or at least open it, and some people even click on random links.

Today I had my weekly discussion on John V’s the meaning crisis. The facilitator this morning asked what capital city describes your emotional state today.

I loved this question. At first I drew a blank, but then I felt Athens! In my memories it is sun kissed and dry, filled with ruins looking back towards prior greatness, but with confidence in current potential, vitality and beauty. Athens is a city that is filled with meaning. Whatever it is that meaning is… For me it is the triumph of quality over quantity. What does every moment feel like, how is each brick its own singular brick, how is this “ruin” beautiful and singular in its on going “decay” how it is qualitatively different today, than yesterday, different from 100 years ago, 1000 years ago.

Some people said, Helsinki, Buenos Aires, Barcelona… All of these cities bring up a quality for me. They have an emotion, a personality, a singularity. I feel November in Helsinki, dark, cold and bright, blue black. I feel Buenos Aires, music and flow and broad streets, narrow streets, hidden squares and spaces, I feel Barcelona gaudi and the mediterranean and parks filled with pigeons.

In each of these feelings I feel people.

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