Amanda Knox

There's never been a better sitcom than Community. At least in this timeline, which may be shaping up to be the darkest timeline.

The Difference Between Discomfort and Danger Recently, I spoke with Melissa Arnot, a woman who summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen.

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The kind of threat that should make you turn and run. The problem is, sometimes they feel exactly the same. For many years after I was released from prison, discomfort felt like danger to me, and danger felt like home.

I don’t mean the difference between putting your hand on a hot stove and being a little chilly in the morning. I mean the difference between psychological, spiritual, emotional, or physical discomfort—the kind that helps you grow—and actual existential threat.

Not to prove she was a hero, but to find out whether she could survive *as she really was.* There’s a quiet distinction here, one I’ve spent much of my life learning to recognize: the difference between discomfort and danger.

Mt Everest

Recently, I spoke with Melissa Arnot, a woman who summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. That is, she climbed to the literal top of the world while her body suffocated. What struck me more than the feat itself was what Melissa said about why she did it:
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How Strength Becomes a Cage (Melissa Arnot) How do you let go of control when survival once depended on it?

How Strength Becomes a Cage (Melissa Arnot)

An excellent listen @amandaknox.com The Mountain metaphor resonates so much after living in the Alps for 20years
Such wisdom in this discussion

open.substack.com/pub/amandakn...

Hard Knox with Amanda Knox

Feeling trapped? Hard Knox with amandaknox.com delves into turning adversity into insight. Explore resilience and post-traumatic growth with Amanda and her guests. Plus, get personal with Ask Amanda Anything. Transform your challenges into strength.

But when I catch a glance of my own name on someone else's screen, yeah I feel entitled to read what they're writing. Very different.

Again, not rude to overhear someone talking on a plane. Not rude to catch a glance of someone's screen in the seat in front of you on a plane. It is rude to intently eavesdrop and transcribe what someone is saying. Likewise, to read all of someone's messages.

Everyone is going to overhear everyone else near them on a plane. What's rude is explicity listening in and reporting what a seat neighbor is saying to random third parties because they happen to be a person you've seen on TV.

It is my busines if someone is texting all their friends about my conversation.

I did tell her.

You know you are in Vegas when an airplane size bottle of tequila tumbles to the floor of the car as the Uber driver opens your door, and he says, "Is that your drink or mine?" And it was HIS.

Is it too much to ask that the lady sitting in front of me, when I'm on a flight to Las Vegas for my sister's bachelorette party, NOT text everyone in her phone about my private conversations with my sister?

Ask Amanda Anything - Living Without a List, How to Find Common Ground, Parenting for Independence Reach out to us at ⁠⁠⁠www.amandaknox.com⁠⁠ ⁠

More thoughts on this, and more, in the latest episode of Ask Amanda Anything!
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But if you’re open to finding a crazy mushroom lamp, or a fabulous old lady church hat, you may walk away unexpectedly joyful. That’s how I think about life. And it has saved me endless frustration.

Thrift store shopping is all about leaving yourself open to being surprised. If you go into a thrift store looking for that perfect black dress, you’ll likely be disappointed.

And we live in a world that caters to that mindset. Amazon conditions us to be able to acquire just the thing we think we need. But life so often isn’t like that. Life is more like a thrift store full of used goods, strange one-of-kinds, and things you didn’t know you needed.

When you go to the department store, the grocery store, or your local Costco, you often have a list of things you need (or want). Eggs. Crackers. New slippers. A sleek black cocktail dress in just your size.

You can treat life like a department store or like a thrift store. The former will leave you perpetually frustrated. The latter will open you up to surprising joy.
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This is the best thing you’ve ever written. Bar. None.

Thank you!

Zen vs. Tribalism The greatest antidote to tribalism I’ve ever found is ancient: yin and yang. This Taoist concept—which later permeated Zen Buddhism—says that everything contains the seed of its opposite. There is no ...

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The longer you live inside that bubble, the thicker its walls become. You stop seeing clearly, and you stop thinking freely.

And yet we’re allergic to that kind of nuance, especially when our identity is tied up in being “correct,” in being part of a righteous group fighting the bad guys.

Yes, it may have been a violation of constitutional war powers. And yes, it may be crucial to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Both things can be true.

What if the truth is more complicated, more paradoxical, than either tribe can comfortably admit?

The tribal instinct says we must choose. Pick your camp, your team colors, your media diet, your enemy. But the yin-yang lens shows us a different way: what if both sides are partially right?

Fox News praised it as a necessary act to “protect Americans from terrorist proxies funded by Tehran.”

So, who’s right?