Ya big softie →

Published April 5, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 5  ·  

Maybe I’m just a big sentimental softie, but I bet if you peer deep into your past, you don’t see a list of names, dates, and places. Instead, I bet you get a hodgepodge of images and events, and I bet that some of the details are hazy or mixed up, like who was there, what they were wearing, or whether it happened when you were six or when you were eight. But I bet the feelings are clear. You’re probably not confused about whether you felt proud or afraid, welcomed or rejected. And I bet that although you could describe these memories to me—a golden-hued day at the zoo, the last fight your parents had before they got divorced—the words would leave a lot out. To really get me to understand, you’d need to hook your brain up to mine, Avatar-style, so I could feel what you felt.

~ Adam Mastroianni from, You’ll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that?

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Mastroianni’s article is about learning. In particular, how and why and when we forget, and what might we try to do about that fact. I go through cycles of grasping at trying to remember, and leaning into the forgetting. At the end, I expect I’ll forget everything. (Just sayin’.)

My life improves when I realize that my happiness is relative to where I set my sights. If my goal is to remember as much as possible, I’m going to fall short and be disappointed. If my goal is to be pleasantly surprised when I’m reminded of things (experiences, ideas from others, and my own ideas) which I had already discovered, then that suggests a different course of action. Rather than strain to hold on to everything, I try to release everything from within my mind, and try arrange the world around me to bring me joy.

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Entire vital function →

Published April 4, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 4  ·  ,

So far as man stands for anything, and is productive or originative at all, his entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a scientific exploration or experiment or textbook, that may not be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.

~ William James

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How does this even exist? →

Published April 3, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 3  ·  ,

In fact, now I’m wondering if that’s one way you know something is great? When you say: “How does this even exist?”

~ Austin Kleon from, The making of Lilo & Stitch

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Yes, that’s definitely one way.

In about ten weeks I’m making my annual journey to Boston and neighboring Somerville for a parkour event. Much has changed over the years I’ve been going. It’s moved from Septembers to Junes. The size has waxed and waned. A few of the same people are usually there, and there is an endless banquet of new forever-friends.

If you get into doing this thing, and you start going to play and train with others, you soon have a very unusual problem: The more you run into a particular someone, the more it happens in different places. You start to have this precious view of who this person is separated from where that person normally is. Sometimes you know someone well, but have no idea where you know them from. It’s weird. It’s awesome. How does this even exist?

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April 02, 2023 — #26 →

Published April 2, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 2  ·  

Reading time: About 4 minutes, 900 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/26

A glimpse →

Published April 2, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 2  ·  

The best way to get a vivid impression and feeling of a landscape, is to sit down before it and read, or become otherwise absorbed in thought; for then, when your eyes happen to be attracted to the landscape, you seem to catch Nature unawares, and see her before she has time to change her aspect. The effect lasts but for a single instant, and passes away almost as soon as you are conscious of it; but it is real, for that moment. It is as if you could overhear and understand what the trees are whispering to one another; as if you caught a glimpse of a face unveiled, which veils itself from every willful glance. The mystery is revealed, and after a breath or two, becomes just as great a mystery as before.

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne from, Nathaniel Hawthorne on How to Look and Really See

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*sigh* Some people can write.

There’s a practice to reaching that effect. At first, I couldn’t pull it off. After much practice, I can now arrive at this state quite regularly. Alas, at no time have I ever imagined as delightful a description as Hawthorne’s. The interesting part of the effect—at least, the effect I’m experiencing—is that it is quite clearly me that is different. Our brains are powerful filters; salient is how we describe that which our brains admit. In experiencing this effect, it feels like the salience filter is transparent… as if, instead of feeling swamped by sensory input, the window to the world is momentarily perfectly clear.

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Rejection →

Published April 1, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 1  ·  , ,

Creating something that can be turned down takes discipline and courage, so there’s reason to feel pride for each rejection.

~ Rhaina Cohen

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Bitter or better? →

Published March 31, 2023  ·  All posts on Mar 31  ·  ,

The Stoics would agree that the world can be ugly and awful and disappointing. They would just remind us that what we control is what we do about this. We control what difference we try to make. We control whether it makes us bitter or makes us better—whether we complain or just get to work.

~ Ryan Holiday from, Why I Pick up Trash at the Beach

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My grasp is failing. My ability to keep track of this, and make a plan for organizing that, is waning. Each year I more quickly become frustrated at unforeseen twists and foreseen complexities. Believing I’m successfully juggling just two things, I’m surprised to discover one has already hit the floor. I’ve moved beyond having a to-do list long enough that many items are below the fold; the regularity of adding items near the top means the items below the fold will never get done. Instead, I have multiple systems piled up in sedimentary fashion. Entire segments of my life, which I thought were integral to my identity, have fallen below the fold.

And every day my life gets better. I wish I’d learned the lesson sooner.

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Ordinary →

Published March 30, 2023  ·  All posts on Mar 30  ·  , ,

The extraordinary doesn’t wipe out the ordinary. People get married in wartime. Babies are born during pandemics. My mom drew water fro my bath while my father did test runs for the end of the world.

~ Mary Laura Philpott

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Why aren’t you working on that? →

Published March 29, 2023  ·  All posts on Mar 29  ·  ,

Richard Hamming was a mathematician who worked at Bell Labs during the 1940s-1970s. He had a habit of sitting down with scientists in other fields and asking them “What are the important problems of your field?” After they explained their field’s most important open problem, he would ask them: why aren’t you working on that?

~ “CFAR!Duncan” from, Appendix

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Ouch! I wonder if Hamming got punched in the face a lot? That’s a link to an appendix that doesn’t have an attributed person as the author. But if you can see past all that, it’s a series of eight prompts which really cut through my bullshit. “Why am I not working on that?” …well, actually, I am trying to work on that. Unfortunately, I’m also dividing my efforts in too many other directions simultaneously.

Maybe that’s just me though?

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Nepotism →

Published March 28, 2023  ·  All posts on Mar 28  ·  , ,

If we don’t want to live in a nepotistic society, we have to stop practicing nepotism. And by ‘we’, I mean you.

~ Richard V. Reeves

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