My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
~ Michael J. Fox
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Perspective
Perspective
Maybe it’s the nature of the binary times that we’re in that makes it very, very difficult to applaud one thing without condemning another. I think we’re afraid to take a victory lap, and maybe we should be. Maybe that’s just a bit premature or arrogant.
~ Nick Gillespie, from Mike Rowe on Patriotism, Paul Harvey, and American Progress
The same question (can we applaud one thing without condeming other things?) arises with eulogies. I say we can. The key is to know and understand the broader context that we’re—just for a little while—ignoring.
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The definition of done
What you realise, the moment you ask “what would it mean to be done for the day?”, is that the answer can’t possibly involve doing all the things that need doing – even though that’s the subconscious goal with which many of us approach life, driving ourselves crazy in the process. If there are a thousand things that need doing, you’re going to need to arrive at some definition of “finished” that doesn’t encompass them all.
~ Oliver, from What would it mean to be done for the day?
And defining “done” for the day is just the first step. How can I be done at the end of this week? …month? I need to keep pulling back to larger timeframes to imagine: How do I ever stop having a, “the next thing I should do is…”?
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First priority
Make your own recovery the first priority in your life.
~ Robin Norwood
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Wait, that’s absolutely backwards
“Do you have any ideas in mind?”
I was talking with someone recently, and they asked me what ideas I had in mind. I described a visual that had recently come to mind for me, and I then, as a followup to that visual, I added a few ideas as single words.
(I’m very intentionally, not being specific here…)
When I finished—it all took but a few moments—it struck me…
Dude, those single words really are the ideas I want to convey…
But that imagery? It’s exactly the opposite of those ideas. That visual is a terrible idea…
Let’s set aside the confusion I may have caused to my friend. (Although, I did point out that I saw the contradiction.)
It seems to me it’s really rare to have a moment of such clarity around something important: If I hadn’t been explaining it to another person, I might have hung onto that visual imagery.
Where are you hanging on to the wrong details?
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Infinite
Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; It is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
~ Thomas Carlyle
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Oh, good
I’ve never worked a day in my life! I don’t! These days I get up every morning and say, “Oh good, another day!”
~ Ridley Scott, from Ridley Scott
I hope the key-phrase in there is, “these days.” Because I definitely do not get up every morning thinking that. Presuming I ever reach that point of “oh good”, the challenge for me will be not piling more “should”s onto myself and forcing myself backwards. We shall see.
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I wish
I wish when I was younger I knew what I know today, what I feel like today, a kind of ease with myself. Because when you’re younger you are much more intense and everything’s much more important and you look back and you think, “Oh what was that all about?” Nothing is that important, just live your life because we’re here so briefly.
~ Anthony Hopkins, from Anthony Hopkins
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Oh good, it’s not just me who thinks this. Because, if I could take that knowledge with me, I’d really like to again be the age I was, when I thought I’d surely have my shit together by the time I was the age I am now.
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What will change your mind?
What are you working on? When will you change your mind? What can you learn, what can you challenge?
~ Seth Godin, from https://seths.blog/2024/07/what-are-you-thinking-about/
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As is often the case, Godin asks really good rhetorical questions. Me? In recent weeks I’ve been challenging myself to shift my focus to longer timeframes. I’ve reached a level of sophistication where—give or take—what I do on any given day does not matter; I don’t go off the rails. What I do, is get anxious about “all the things” when I get lost thinking about too many things.
Instead of hyper-focusing on the right-now, I need to zoom out. What I just accomplished moves me towards a goal. Yes, even if I just blew off some scheduled thing to go play outside; That moves my health forward energizing me for another day. And each day making some progress is just exactly the right thing to be doing.
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Open to
It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.
~ Richard Cavett
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Growth
Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to continue to the point where you can discount society’s bad moods.
~ Paul Graham
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A way of seeing
As a filmmaker, you have a way of seeing things that is inherent in any telling of a story. You read a book, and images form in your mind, and as a director, you explain those images to the crew members. That’s what directing is, that’s what they mean when they say explaining your vision. So for me, it’s really not about any conscious desire to imprint a style. It’s simply: here’s how I see it. This is my understanding of the material. This is what affected me, here’s when I cried, we need to make sure that this moment is real, we need to make sure that your your heart is broken like I felt when I read the script. It’s about communicating exactly what you feel. And that’s the art of directing.
~ Sam Rami, from https://the-talks.com/interview/sam-raimi
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I find I’m often confused by having too many options. I can get far into the weeds exploring all the possible way to do something. Instead, I truly believe that after enough time practicing some creative endeavor, it’s more important to simply follow your own feeling. Follow your own inspiration. “This is what I feel I want to do,” becomes the correct compass to follow. It’s simply: Here’s how I see it.
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Moments you weren’t expecting
What I’m looking for, in both fiction and documentary, are moments that you weren’t expecting, and which the audience don’t feel prepared for, moments that are candid, like something that just happened in front of the camera, and it’s not going to happen again. Those are the moments you live for as a documentary maker.
~ Kevin Macdonald, from https://the-talks.com/interview/kevin-macdonald/
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I’ve lately been on a bender reading many of these really interesting, really short, interviews with countless people. Most of them don’t particularly interest me. “But wait,” you’re thinking, “those two sentences seem contradictory.” I’m glad you asked about that!
You see, once I know that there’s some large body of work and it’s pretty uniform, then I wonder: Why should I think that the ones I like are the really good ones? Since the work is (pretty) uniform, maybe they’re all really good (or pretty good, at least) and the reason I don’t like most of them… is me. If I sift through the work am I identifying the good ones? …or am I reinforcing, via confirmation bias, my narrow view points? If I wanted to grow—growth often being uncomfortable, especially when it comes to shifting one’s own perspectives—maybe I should intentionally read the ones that I think aren’t that good. Maybe I should be seeking out things which I’m misjudging, and that would by definition be the things I think aren’t that good.
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Luxury
If you wish to remove avarice you must remove its mother, luxury.
~ Cicero
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I do have some rules
One rule is: Anything I find, which ticks two (or more!) boxes from my list of decadent favorite pastimes, I must include herein. For example: Something that bashes on social media platforms and makes me chuckle out loud? Oh, that’s getting included. Another rule, written but almost impossible to enforce, is: Don’t over think it.
The humble knife is a good example. An edged tool for cutting tough materials apart is just as useful to 21st-century home chef as it was to a nomadic hunter a hundred thousand years ago. The long past of the knife suggests it will have a long future. In other words, we’re probably not living in the last few years of an eons-long Knife Era.
By the same token, something that has just become “a thing” is less likely to be a long-lasting thing. If everyone around you is suddenly watching rapid-fire videos on something called TikTok, what are the odds we’re in the first few years of a thousand-year TikTok Era?
~ David Cain from, This Will Not Always Be a Thing
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But unlike Fight Club, this entire online blog/web site I have isn’t built upon self-delusion… waaaaaaaaait a minute.
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Questions
The only question that really matters, the only question whose correct answer can exert a civilizing influence on the future specialist, is the question asked by Buddha and Jesus, by Lao-Tsu and Socrates, by Job and Aeschylus, and Chaucer and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, by every philosopher, every mystic, every great artist: Who am I and what, if anything, can I do about it?
~ Aldous Huxley
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Downstream
Here’s a hack for improving your life: When you have a significant decision, ask yourself which of these options would Future You most appreciate? For example, “Should I watch this Sci-fi series, or write?” Future Me gets the rewards from good decisions, (the result of small sessions of writing.)
All success is a lagging indicator…all the good stuff (and bad stuff) is downstream from choices made long before.
~ Ryan Holiday from, 36 Lessons on the Way to 36 Years Old
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I was tempted to write my own 52 Lessons On the Way to 52 Years Old, but decided that would not be a gift to my 3-hours later, still only part-way done, self.
The challenge for me, is that the significant decisions go past unnoticed. It doesn’t even occur to me that my automatic urge to begin the next thing that I can imagine as being useful, is actually a choice. If I was able to reign that in, then perhaps I’d do only 11 things, and then relax with that Sci-fi. It doesn’t occur to me in the moments of the day, that better balance would be the choice that’s the real gift to my future self.
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Hardship
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
~ Alain de Botton
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Feelings
Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
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Knowing when to stick and when to walk away
Among the vast options every day, how does one choose well? Should I observe guardrails and steer down the center of the easy path? If I can see guardrails which are clearly “that would be, or create, a true problem” and “that would be a quagmire of ongoing struggle”, why would I ever want to not steer down the middle of that path?
And finally, some problems get better if we’re willing to talk about them. Some situations, on the other hand, simply get worse when we focus our energy and community on them.
~ Seth Godin from, Working with problems
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Any time I choose to walk away, I can also choose to widen my perspective. From a wider perspective, any time I walk away is simply the next step in my path.
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