Bless hindsight for how it clarifies the confusions of time, for how precisely it plots the true highs and lows on the terrain map of life once the quakes of the moment have died down, for how dispassionately it reveals what was a fleeting enthusiasm and what a lifelong gift. It is good to have an annual hindsight ritual in one’s life and one’s work, the more so the more the two converge. Here are the twenty-five “best” Marginalian essays of 2025 — a composite measure of what you most loved reading and what I most loved writing, which never perfectly coincide. (Bless the otherness of minds.)* * *The Three Elements of the Good LifeRead it here.* * *Do Not Spare YourselfRead it here.* * *An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain DaysRead it here.* * *How to Be a Lichen: Adaptive Strategies for the Vulnerabilities of Being Human from Nature’s Tiny Titans of TenacityRead it here.* * *A Defense of JoyRead it here.* * *HOLD ON LET GO: Urns for Living and the Art of Trusting TimeRead it here.* * *How to Be a Good Explorer on the Lifelong Expedition to YourselfRead it here.* * *The Coziest Place on the Moon: An Illustrated Fable about How to Live with Loneliness and What It Means to Love, Inspired by a Real NASA DiscoveryRead it here.* * *Any Common DesolationRead it here.* * *What a Weasel Knows: Annie Dillard on How to LiveRead it here.* * *How Humanity Saved the GinkgoRead it here.* * *The Stubborn Art of Turning Suffering into Strength: Václav Havel’s Extraordinary Letters from PrisonRead it here.* * *The Souls of AnimalsRead it here.* * *How Two Souls Can Interact with One Another: Simone de Beauvoir on Love and FriendshipRead it here.* * *Mushrooms and Our Search for MeaningRead it here.* * *By Contacts We Are Saved: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Change, the Meaning of Faith, and the Courage of HeresyRead it here.* * *Anima: One Woman’s Search for Meaning in the Footsteps of Bulgarian Mountain ShepherdsRead it here.* * *Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, and with Fangs: The Alchemy of Unrequited Love and the Story Behind Emily Dickinson’s Most Famous PoemRead it here.* * *ForgivenessRead it here.* * *Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of SuccessRead it here.* * *Little Free Library Divinations: Searching for the Meaning of Life in Discarded Books and Found ObjectsRead it here.* * *Carl Jung on CreativityRead it here.* * *The Search for Meaning Cast in Clay: 19 Years of The Marginalian in 19 Ceramic SentencesRead it here.* * *How Not to Waste Your LifeRead it here.* * *Favorite Books of 2025Read it here.donating = lovingFor seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.newsletterThe Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.