☕ saturday mornings - August 20, 2022

the challenges of happiness, being a rock & collecting dots

Tommy Dixon

Aug 20, 2022

Happy Saturday all!

I hope you’re having a lovely start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

I'm getting a few life things sorted out as I get ready to head to Spain next week to start a 4 month exchange semester at the University of Navarra. Lots going on!

Here's a recap of the coolest things I've explored this week.

✍️ Quote I’m pondering:

Montesquieu, French philosopher, on the challenges of happiness:

“If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”

📚 Book passage I loved:

"To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it."

— Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

💡 Idea from me: Collecting the Dots

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

This is one of my favourite lines from Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech. Perhaps my favourite idea from this year.

By analyzing Jobs' path you begin to see the random ways the dots in his life all combined to craft his future.

Before Apple, Steve Jobs spent a year in India on acid and considered moving to Japan to become a zen monk.

He found inspiration for the iconic Mac logo from the time he spent living on an apple orchard.

Driven by his passion for electronics, Jobs joined the HomeBrew computer club where he met Steve Wozniak which led to the creation of the first Mac computer.

Most famously, Steve dropped out of Reed College but decided to take a single calligraphy course. Purely out of curiosity.

"Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts...
Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on."

None of these things could have been predicted or planned when looking forward. They only make sense upon reflection. Looking backward all the unique experiences Jobs pursued all fit together, like pieces of a puzzle.

As you move throughout life you're collecting dots. You're following your intuition. But you don't know what it will turn into. You can't.

You simply have to trust the different experiences you have will converge into something amazing.

❓ Question for You:

For a time when you’re overwhelmed or feeling scattered, ask yourself:

How much would I pay to relive this experience 20-30 years from now?

📸 Photo of the week:

If you have any feedback or just want to be friends, feel free to reach out.

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Have a fantastic weekend.

Much love to you and yours,

Tommy