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Posts Tagged ‘Sapiens’

All About Us – And Happiness

Posted in African Safari, aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , on May 22, 2026| Leave a Comment »

A memory of an afternoon safari in Tanzania. — Art by Pat Bean

My Way

Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, one of the top 100 books of the 21st Century according to the New York Times Readers’ Pick.

Wow! That was my first reaction when I started reading this book. It’s 2.5 million years of history squeezed into 599 pages – and it’s all about us. There’s the good, the bad, the ugly and questions about what’s next.

I read it a while back, but unlike some books that quickly fade from my memory, this one has stuck with me. I’m thinking about reading it again. What would be really fun is to find a used copy in which someone has underlined passages and/or made margin notes. Someone else’s thoughts is one of the reasons I like purchasing used books.

Art: It’s supposed to be a Marabou Stork. I saw lots of them in Tanzania in 2007. From the back, if you have a decent imagination, these birds look like they are wearing a long black coat, which has prompted some people to call it the undertaker bird. Anyway, this quick sketch was fun to do, but the best part about it was that it reminded me of my two-week African safari, during which I identified 182 different bird species. While that’s not an impressive number for what I could have seen, it pleased me.

Quote: And that brings me to a favorite quote, which I will paraphrase because I can’t find it or who said it. Simply put: “Happiness is not always getting what you want but loving what you have.” Anyone know who said it?

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Scamp. She is an avid reader whose mind is always asking questions (many of which are unanswerable), an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for Story Circle Network’s Journal, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

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Schadenfreude

Posted in Art, Books, Journeys, tagged , , on January 14, 2022| 7 Comments »

Thistles look pretty but are prickly, just like us humans.

The Meaning of a New Word

I was scanning through the New York Times this morning in search of something to write about when I came across the word schadenfreude. As usual when I come across a word I don’t know – and this has been a habit even before I hit my teens – I stopped reading and looked the word up.

Schadenfreude means taking pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. Now who in the hell would want to do that, I instantly thought. But then I remembered how much pleasure it gave me over the years when I heard my narcistic ex-husband was having a bad time. So much for my momentary feeling of superiority.

And I knew if I thought about it longer, I would come up with other instances in which I took pleasure from someone else’s pain. We humans are not a nice lot. I’ve long known this, but it was confirmed in my head even stronger after reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It’s a book I highly recommend, by the way.

The book concluded that we humans were the cause of most extinctions and that groups of more than 100 humans quickly found something to go to war over – beginning with religion and politics. The big item in today’s news that has everybody disagreeing is Covid. Masks, no masks. Vax or no vax. Isolation or herd immunity.

I wonder how humankind is still managing to survive?

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

 

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