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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 222 (Nov 16, 2025) — Luck, Truth, Solitude, & More
The Sloww Sunday newsletter sends to 10,000+ readers slowing down to the wisdom within. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding this newsletter to others.
New to Sloww? Here’s what it’s about in a nutshell (which mirrors the newsletter sections below):
🧠 Intellectual needs
Last week’s newsletter covered burning questions. This week we’ll pair it with the related concept of intellectual needs.
An intellectual need:
- is a form of intrinsic motivation; a deep desire to learn something.
- arises from curiosity about a question or to solve a specific problem when it’s most interesting or important.
- is often greatest when there is a hole in an otherwise well-connected web of knowledge.
This is similar to what Maria Popova, founder of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) describes as intellectual hunger:
- “I thought that maybe there was an intellectual hunger for that sort of cross-disciplinary curiosity and self-directed learning.” — Maria Popova
🔥 + 🧠 Pro tip about procrastination: If you’re procrastinating on learning something, maybe there isn’t a burning question driving an intellectual need. Transformative learning happens when they both come together.
PS: You can learn more about all this (and so much more) in the Synthesizer course.
0️⃣ Explore More: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development (Sloww Stage Support)
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🤫 On stillness, solitude, & silence…
With a 1-year-old, I have a newfound appreciation for the rare moments of stillness, solitude, and silence:
- “I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” — Rumi
- “Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.” — Gordon Hempton
- “Awareness, and silence, and stillness are all different ways of saying the same thing, of pointing to something that’s already yours that you don’t have to get.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
- “Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.” — Hermann Hesse
- “The essence of every living being is silence … You must discover your original silence.” — Jean Klein
- “When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.” — Sri Aurobindo
1️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
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👶 Warren Buffett on his birth luck
Warren Buffett is 95 years old and just wrote what has been called his “farewell letter” to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. While I don’t typically follow Warren Buffett news, I do find it amazing how often he mentions the good luck of his lottery of birth. This last letter is no different:
- “The center of the United States was a very good place to be born, to raise a family, and to build a business. Through dumb luck, I drew a ridiculously long straw at birth … But Lady Luck is fickle and – no other term fits – wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck – which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge. Dynastic inheritors have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they emerged from the womb, while others have arrived, facing a hell-hole during their early life or, worse, disabling physical or mental infirmities that rob them of what I have taken for granted. In many heavily-populated parts of the world, I would likely have had a miserable life and my sisters would have had one even worse. I was born in 1930 healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male and in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck. My sisters had equal intelligence and better personalities than I but faced a much different outlook.” (Pair with: The Ovarian Lottery: A Thought Experiment from Warren Buffett)
There’s one more line from the letter that is worth highlighting:
- “Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.” (Pair with: The College Graduate & The Garbage Collector: A Thought Experiment from Robert Sapolsky)
2️⃣ Explore More: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
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🧠 “If you were me, you’d understand”
This is ultimately so obvious, but it’s arguably one of the most important things to realize in life (and then always keep top of mind):
- “If you could see the world the way I see it, you’d understand why I behave the way I do.” — Axiom of Clinical Psychology
- “In 45 years of research… this (learning) is the one that is nearest and dearest to my heart: behavior makes sense from the actor’s perspective or else he or she wouldn’t do it.” — Ellen Langer
- “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” — Harper Lee
- “To understand another person, you must swim in the same waters that drowned them.” — Unknown
- “We can see other people’s behaviour, but not their experience … I see you, and you see me. I experience you, and you experience me. I see your behaviour. You see my behaviour. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me. Just as you cannot ‘see’ my experience of you.” — R. D. Laing
- “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “To understand all is to forgive all.” — Unknown
3️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
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😂 Awakening with a laugh
I just added new memes to this page: 25+ Spiritual Awakening Memes to Wake Up with a Sense of Humor
4️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Spiritual Seeing (Sloww Stage 4)
👣 Featured Product: Wise Walk: 365 Days of Enlightening Exercise
On the love of truth:
- “A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.” — Albert Camus
- “The drive for enlightenment is not a matter of being free from suffering or from problem, but it is a love for the truth.” — A. H. Almaas
- “When the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ appears in all urgency, when one is ready to give all to this question, then one is a disciple, a disciple of truth, of life.” — Jean Klein
- “Self-inquiry most of all requires love for the truth—irrespective of the consequences that it may have for your life … At some point the interest in the nature of ‘I’ eclipses all other interests. It is like falling in love with truth or reality.” — Rupert Spira
- “The sole prerequisite for success is the love, the desire, for the truth … The intensity of the desire for the truth is all that counts … When truth seekers find themselves spontaneously preoccupied most of the time with the ultimate truth, they should know that they are indeed fortunate, and that this sacred preoccupation comes from the divine.” — Francis Lucille
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
