The Apostle Paul stated at the end of 1 Thessalonians 5:27;

>"I charge you in the name of the Lord to read this letter to all the brothers and sisters.” 

Summary: "1 Thessalonians is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the church in Thessalonica, encouraging believers to stand firm in their faith amid persecution. Paul commends their love and faith, instructs them on holy living, and reassures them about the return of Christ, urging them to remain vigilant and hopeful for His coming."

Genre and Style: 1 Thessalonians is an epistle, characterized by its personal tone, pastoral care, and doctrinal teaching. It combines thanksgiving, exhortation, and instruction on the end times." - biblehub

• 1 Thessalonians 1 - Written: Greetings to the Thessalonians (biblehub.com)
• 1 Thessalonians 1 - Audio Bible | Bible Hub 2 Thessalonians follows, Paul's continued letter, with more books and translations of the Old and New Testament.
• Book of 1 Thessalonians | Guide with Key Information and Resources (bibleproject.com) Videos, guides, podcasts, and classes to help explore the origins, content, and purpose of the Bible and learn how to approach it with greater insight and wisdom.

Especially important for modern times

• Are we living in the end times? | GotQuestions.org This article explains many of the “natural signs, spiritual signs, sociological signs, technological signs, and political signs,” foretold in bible prophecy coming to pass that indicates the end of the age and Jesus Christ's promised return, a time foretold to include various and increasing environmental calamities, plagues, moral decline, wars, earthquakes, growing governmental dominance/deception ("with all power, signs, and lying wonders," 2 Thessalonians 2:9), and how to prepare.
• What is the end times timeline? | GotQuestions.org A summary of the timeline from the hope of the soon rapture of the believers in Jesus (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), the 7 year tribulation period (Revelation 6–16), until the creation of the new heavens and earth (Revelation 21–22).

"Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12

"The Romans Road to salvation is a method based on the biblical principles found in the New Testament book of Romans to explain how a person can come to faith in Jesus Christ. Shared with millions of people around the world, the Romans Road explains why we need salvation, how God provided salvation, how we can receive salvation, and the results of salvation.” What is the Romans Road to salvation? | GotQuestions.org

More bible prophecy being fulfilled and resources for growing in faith and encouragement is in previous posts, if interested.

First one to guess attains Nirvana 🧘

Yes. I remember the thread of what resonated with you; not so much “Frankl explains how to find meaning,” but the deeper realization that life doesn't have to become perfect before we can say yes to it. Meaning can exist even inside limitation, uncertainty, pain, and ordinary little moments.

And I think your personal angle is much more interesting than a conventional book review. Something like: “I didn't expect this book to make me think about life this way.”

I originally bought Viktor F. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Then I also bought Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything. Somehow, for reasons I can't really explain, I decided to read Yes to Life first.

And I'm actually glad I did.

I expected a book about meaning. What I got was something much more fundamental: a different relationship with life itself.

One of the things that stayed with me is the idea that saying "yes" to life doesn't mean saying yes because everything is good.

It's saying yes in spite of everything.

That distinction hit me.

Because sometimes I think we unconsciously make a deal with life: I'll be grateful when things get better. I'll feel peaceful when I have certainty. I'll enjoy life when I finally get what I want. I'll say yes when life gives me a reason to.

Frankl seems to turn that around.

Life doesn't necessarily owe us the circumstances we think we need in order for it to be meaningful.

Even when circumstances cannot be changed, there is still something that belongs to us: how we meet them.

And I don't mean this in the shallow "just think positive" way. Frankl wasn't talking about denying suffering. He experienced suffering on a level most of us can hardly imagine.

What I found beautiful is that meaning doesn't always have to come from some huge purpose or achievement.

Sometimes it can be found in something incredibly small.

A moment of beauty.

Love.

Kindness.

A conversation.

Looking at the sky.

Being present for something that, objectively, doesn't change your circumstances at all.

And somehow, that can still be enough.

That made me think about how often I overlook the life that is actually happening because I'm waiting for the life I think should be happening.

I can be so focused on fixing, improving, achieving, understanding, healing, becoming… that I forget to simply be alive.

Maybe saying yes to life isn't about liking everything life gives us.

Maybe it's about saying:

"I don't have to understand everything that is happening to me in order to participate in life."

"I don't have to control the future to be present today."

"My circumstances don't have to be perfect for this moment to contain something meaningful."

And perhaps most importantly, suffering doesn't automatically make life meaningless.

Sometimes we can't choose what happens.

But we can still choose how we stand in relationship to what happens.

That, for me, is probably the biggest thing I took from Yes to Life.

It made me wonder whether the question isn't always:

"How do I make my life the way I want it to be?"

But sometimes:

"Given the life that is here right now, how do I meet it?"

I haven't read Man's Search for Meaning yet.

And strangely, I think reading Yes to Life first might have been exactly what I needed.

Because before searching for the meaning of my life, perhaps I needed to learn something simpler:

to say yes to life itself.

You can follow Learner's Cabin on Instagram for more of such content.

Recently I listened to a detailed discussion on 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from Dialogue: discussion on books, and listening to the key insights of the book broken down in relation to everyday life made me realize that happiness might not be as unreal a notion as we take it to be and may be something one can actively construct, almost on demand, if one understands and realizes the mechanics behind it. 

According to my interpretation, the core idea that the book is espousing is this: When we think of what being “happy” means? We often think of it as a passive state of being, “a moment” in time when we realize a kind of satisfaction…or something along these lines. But the book makes the point that most of what we pursue as happiness is only passive, and passive activities do not provide satisfaction. people often look to tv shows and movies, food, recreational activities to seek comfort and attain happiness. All of these actions are passive in the sense that after a very short time they can go on autopilot and carry on just fine and hence require very little effort. The problem is that they feel pleasant in the immediate moment but ultimately come to an abrupt halt, which leaves us unsatisfied afterwards. The author wants to push the idea that most people experience their happiest moments when they are actively engaged in demanding and exhausting tasks, so much so that “comfort” and “enjoyment” are practically antonyms of one another.

What the author means by “Flow” is very precise, it is a state that one can potentially encounter between something that seems like a challenge to him and where his skill lies. The author lists the necessary conditions for flow: 1) one needs to have clear goals, 2) immediate feedback on what your state is, and 3) this activity or pursuit must be difficult enough that you struggle but not difficult enough that you become anxious about not achieving it. If this pursuit is not difficult enough, you will be bored and it may turn passive, and if it is too difficult you will become anxious about it. Flow happens in this narrow space between being bored and anxious, and this space must be constantly shifted, meaning that for a activity to continually keep you in the  “flow” the task needs to get harder as your skills get more developed.

Now this idea will sound absurd, but if you stay with the author, he will make it make sense. The idea is- within flow, your sense of self temporarily disappears in such a way that this disappearing is the reward itself. When you are immersed in your pursuit, the feeling of your self becomes insignificant, your sense of time warps, and your physiological needs of hunger, sex, or any kind of apetite all become dull and rest in the background. The author refers to this state as "autotelic" and claims that the activity itself becomes the reward that you seek, so one might say that he is “seeking nothing out of it but something in it, because there is no external goal.” This chapter I thought was particularly powerful because we tend to thing that the only things we would really love and which will make us happy in this life are money, prestige and status; when really the true prize and what would satisfy is this flow state, and the others are only byproducts. 

Now some people appear to achieve this state of “flow” in everything they do, but how? The book, according to me, stays consistent and coherent in answering this. The author argues that there is a skill to this. Some people have an “autotelic personality” in which people possess traits such as being highly curious, less egocentric, not relying on external stimulus. The autotelic personality can make just about any situation, even an extremely boring or difficult one, into a flow activity, simply by identifying and meeting the balance of challenge and skill demanded. Everybody has the potential to attain or experience this “flow” state because it is less about someone’s peculiar circumstances and more about how they interpret and interact with them.

To sum it all up, if you keep stuck in the notion of “happiness” as a stable state or an instance in time where you get all the deserved satisfaction, then it's only a house of cards waiting for a gust of wind. One has to seek whatever he means by “happiness” within his pursuit or in the flow of it and not as an outcome of it. And one attains this through identifying and realizing the space between something that seems like a challenge to him and where his skill lies. 

I keep coming back to these insights and will keep doing so because they do not claim that flow is an answer to achieving “happiness” or whatever one means by it, but it has the potential by making it more realizable by shifting the goalpost from outside to inside. It only depends on how you allocate your attention moment by moment, and I find this much more useful and practical than any goal setting approach I have ever read or heard. 

Hope this provided you something.

Hello!

I'm posting about it again, since I have added many cool features since my post last month!

For the past month or so I have been working on Another Page. It's an e-book reader that also functions as an app blocker. It puts a few pages of a classic book between you and your most distracting apps. So when you try to open an app like TikTok or Instagram, a reading screen will show up first. Read a bit, and the app will open for the timed window you've set. Then it will lock once again.

Here's how it works:

* Pick the apps that you want to block.
* When you open one, a reading session will start, resuming right where you left off.
* Once you hit your goal, in pages or minutes, the app will unlock for the timed window you've set.

A few features of the app: It's a fully featured e-book reader with support for various book formats (EPUB, PDF, MOBI, and AZW3), a good font selection, various themes, and other features like annotations, bookmarks, highlight and a dictionary. It also works as a standalone reader.

The app also comes with a library of about 1,400 free classics from Standard Ebooks, which are nicely formatted public-domain editions that you can read without needing any subscription. Some examples are Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, and Meditations. The app has no backend, requires no account, and has no ads or tracking.

The free version has all the core features: the reader, the full library of 1,400 books, blocking, streaks, and stats. It works fine on its own. The app also a premium tier if you want more, with unlimited blocked apps (free covers 3), app groups with their own rules, uploading your own books, extra schedule windows, reading insights, and a couple of streak freezes a month.

Let me know if you have any feedback or questions! You can also DM me if you are curious about the premium, and I can send you promo codes.

Android (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.anotherpage
iPhone (App Store): https://apps.apple.com/app/id6783629028

Thanks!

Until very recently, I used to be someone who liked the work only when it had my touch in one way or another, if i didn’t approve or gave it a heads up then i wouldn’t liked to be associated with it at all. I was the kind of person who never felt that things were good enough, redoing emails two or three times and practicing conversations over and over, just so I could slide in the words whose importance only means something to me. I kept pushing myself towards an ideal, against a flawless version that didn’t actually exist. I accepted this as part of my mental make up, thinking it was the cost of havingbyproduct of having high standards. After reading this book, I realized it wasn't any inherent personality trait of mine at all. Rather, it was just the defense mechanism I created to avoid the constant feeling of inadequacy.

Here's what I learned:

• First, Perfectionism isn't about doing your best (even if you might have the same reference). Perfectionism is about seeking approval. According to Brown, perfectionism is not about excellence but about seeking approval. It's a tag we like to impersonate to avoid being seen, a shield we employ to take shelter. Realizing that my need to polish and redo work was less about quality and more about preserving my sense of self helped me make sense of my exhausting behavioral patterns.
• Second, Your worth isn't something you have to earn, it's where you start. The central thesis of the book is that you are worthy right now. Not after a promotion, not after losing the last 20 pounds, and not after getting your life in order, you do not have to strive to become "good enough." However, we often hold the opposite belief- that we must somehow earn our worthiness before we're allowed to fully feel it. The author explains that this mindset comes from a scarcity of spirit. And this inner feeling of lack bleeds into every aspect of life and always tells us that we are one slip-up away from proving, to ourselves, that we were never enough.
• Third, there are two different ways of getting over discomfort. One is going through it and eventually surpassing its finish line or boundary (there's always one); the second is actively ignoring it by distracting ourselves or trying to repress it by being indifferent. We live in a culture of numbing, where we're encouraged to be busy and avoid discomfort through distractions (overworking, overeating, shopping, scrolling, etc.). The problem is, you can’t numb just the bad feelings. Numbing unpleasant emotions inevitably numbs the pleasant ones too, and without any of them, we feel no connection to our experience and no joy. Accepting discomfort instead of escaping it is the only way to feel anything good again.
• Fourth, securing rest and joy are not rewards, they are necessary components of our social functioning. This thought that rest and play are not earned luxuries but essential requirements to become resilient, went against everything I had believed as an adult- that exhaustion proved my worth and that slowing down was something to feel guilty about. I learned that defining our self-worth based on how productive we are is a barrier, not a virtue.
• Fifth, boundaries are not walls. The act of "setting boundaries" is a practice in kindness. Boundaries are not to be conceptualized as borders but as the compassionate boundaries of a home, which bifurcates different areas within it. My whole life I believed that if I set a boundary or said "no," I was committing an essential but selfish act, something that could disappoint others. But the author makes the argument that not having boundaries doesn’t make you more loving but only leads to resentment toward those you didn’t say no to.

Understanding the origins of my perfectionismand letting go of the need to earn my worth has greatly calmed me down. It's not because I do less. It's because I don't have to justify rest or setting boundaries. The central message of the book is so simple, yet it’s one of the most difficult lessons to live: Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.

I found some food for thought in the concept of: "Pleasure versus Satisfaction." Pleasure is momentary and external, and it always requires constant replacement. Satisfaction is created or earned by the process or completion of a creation/task/event, or simply by being present for something. Once you identify this benign difference in what you otherwise would lump together as "happiness," you begin to notice how many hours of your days and life as a whole are dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, and satisfaction receives none of that attention. 

What I found to be unintuitive: The idea that "simplicity is a choice for most people." It didn't sit well with me because, i think, it assumes a baseline of security (financial, geographical, or social) that many people simply do not have. To me, choosing to have less is a privilege. It requires that you already possess a considerable amount. When you are not in possession of an adequate amount, choosing simplicity is not merely an outlook on life, it's a scarcity with a nicer name. 

Both of these perspectives can be true at the same time. The main idea that happiness, or the pursuit of it, doesn't have to be grand or even have a definitive event is definitely worth pondering over. 

Have you read this book? Can you recommend any other book that approaches this matter with different insights?

I had been experiencing a quarter-life crisis. I felt busy but without any sense of purpose. So i went back to the book that set me straight the first time i experienced this.

Some of these insights came to me when I listened to this book in a conversational format on Dialogue: Podcasts on Books. Hearing the key ideas of the books broken down in relation to everyday life really made them resonate more intimately.

Here is what I learned about "finding your thing":

- Flow state is where life really happens. When you're fully engaged in something you love, time flies by. I began to notice when I naturally enter this flow state and realized that's when I feel most alive.

- The universe is not in any urgency; we are. Everything in nature grows slowly, like trees, relationships, and wisdom. I was trying to force big life changes overnight and burning myself out. I needed to learn to go with natural rhythms instead of pushing against them.

- Boredom is your brain's way of processing life. I used to panic when I felt unstimulated and would reach for my phone immediately. Now, I sit with boredom and let my mind wander. That's when the best ideas arise when you're not trying too hard.

- Your "Ikigai" isn’t always your job. I spent years thinking I had to make money from everything I was interested in. Sometimes, your purpose can be being a good friend, making art that no one sees, or just bringing calm energy to chaotic situations. It's really about learning to live in the present moment.

- The idea of impermanence shouldn’t induce anxiety. Everything changes your problems, your successes, and your current situation. This used to frighten me, but now it’s oddly comforting. Bad phases pass, but so do good ones, so you end up appreciating both more.

Unplugging for a bit to recharge and dive into a good book. Sometimes the best way to spark fresh perspectives is to take a step back from the screen. 📚✈️