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Mindfulness and origami.

While it guides you through the step by step of folding a paper crane origami, and introduces the practice of Senbazuru (1000 paper cranes folded within a year, to be granted one wish), Michael Wong tells beautiful and simple anecdotes and principles about mindfulness, meditation, patience and awareness, among other similar values.

Completely worth the read and, if you’re into it, fold 1000 times to happiness

Every once in a while you come across one of those books (or people) whose resilience, despite everything, inspires you.

Despite the majority of his youth and early adulthood being difficult and, in some sense, leading to him being alone, he managed to get by - surviving Auschwitz and all the tragedies of the Second World War and the Jewish persecution - and he found his will to live, his will to fight and move forward.

For life is beautiful if there’s hope, and our human body is a wonderful machine if properly fueled - with hope, resilience and compassion.

A very inspiring read to give you a good nudge towards a better outlook in your own life.

When prompted to think about the personal side of soldiers at a Geopolitics and Geostrategy class at university, our Professor recommended us this book from Tim O’Brien, in which you read, via an unusual storytelling, the lives and thoughts of young soldiers in the Vietnam war. Although the episodes are fictional, everything is based on the author’s real experience and history. The things they carried meditates on the values (for instance compassion or grit) and spirit behind each soldier, what they carried and how they felt.

A beautifully written book on War and the human side of people fighting in it, which can only make sense to revisit now, with both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers fighting a few kilometers away from us.