☕ saturday mornings - june 10, 2023
committing to writing, living life & the anvil of agency
Happy Saturday!
I hope you’re having a lovely start to your weekend.
What I’ve been up to:
I spent a few days overhauling my personal finances to create a strong foundation for the future. I'm pretty happy with the result. Getting your finances in order is painful in the short term, but worth it in the long term.
This year, my lack of commitment has nagged at me. All my life I've split my energy in so many directions. I have a deep curiosity "How powerful could it be if I just did one thing?" I've decided to commit to writing. To lean into the practice, make consuming and sharing great ideas my main priority, avoid distractions, and see what happens.
I've started a deep reading program. I'm reading some of humanity's best books, slowly, intentionally, joyfully. Pausing often, taking notes, and journaling on key ideas. And pairing them with supplementary books, lecture series and author interviews. In June, I'm reading The Fellowship of the Ring and Joseph Campbell’s work to understand The Hero's Journey.
Here's an inside look at the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.
Enjoy.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Anthony Doerr, American author, on not holding back from living:
I used to think that I had to be careful with how much I lived.
As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place. But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out.
I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life.
📚 book passage i loved:
We walk around constantly trying to control and determine what will happen in our lives. No wonder there's so much tension, anxiety, and fear.
Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation.
― The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer
💡 idea from me: the anvil of agency
My life has changed a lot in the past few months. I graduated from university, moved back home, finished my courses. Now, I have mostly an empty calendar. Something I thought would be liberating, but I'm realizing has its own weight.
For the next six months, I'm committing to my writing practice. Writing and reading more. Sharing more of my ideas online. But I've been struggling to design a routine that makes me feel like I'm doing it right. Like I'm doing enough.
With so much freedom, every day is determined by the decisions I make. And my decisions compound over time. They matter. They could make me achieve my aspirations as a writer or fizzle out as an unemployed bum who still lives with his parents.
french philosophy
I've been interested in the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre believed we are the sum of our choices. Life is an unending sequence of decisions and it’s these decisions that shape the quality of our lives. He believed the source of human suffering was not the difficulty of life but the fact we’re reeling with so much freedom: the vast range of decisions we can make.
We are staggered by the near-infinite people we can become, paths we can take, lives we can live. We struggle with the responsibility to shape our own lives. We shake under the anvil of agency.
Freedom is liberating but it's also suffocating.
If the quality of my life is determined by my choices what if I chose wrong? What if I've already chosen wrong?
unlived lives
I have so much agency over my choices, in every moment, it scares me sometimes.
There are so many paths stretched out before me, so many potential lives, yet I can only live one of them. Most will go unlived, unexplored, undiscovered.
Viktor Frankl: Every single moment contains thousands of possibilities—and I can only choose one of them to actualize it. But in making the choice, I have condemned all the others and sentenced them to “never being,” and even this is for all eternity!
Sometimes I'm haunted by the people I didn't become.
Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living (Foer).
Somewhere in the oak-laden McGill library, there's a guy who looks just like me, surrounded by a stack of philosophy books with tortoise shell glasses and an affinity for tweed. Somewhere on Bay Street, there's a guy in a pressed pinstripe suit working in Excel, running on enough caffeine to get an entire Olympic track team disqualified. Somewhere a guy playing college hockey in Massachusetts, still trying to keep the dream alive.
Maybe I'd be happier in these lives. More sure of myself. Less anxious.
Yet, out of the many lives I could have lived, I am here. Out of the many selves I could become, I am impossibly close to this one.
living right & having faith
I've realized the weight I've felt stems from a belief that there's a "right" set of decisions to make. A "right" way to live.
But, this thinking is both deadly and flawed. Deadly because I'll never be certain what the right decision is, so terrorizing myself about making the right one is pointless. Flawed because there is no "right" choice to make. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to live.
Rather it's the indecision and second-guessing that kills.
Many of the paths you could take, the lives you could live, would result in happiness and fulfillment and meaning and everything you've ever hoped for. But none of them will if you don't choose. Or, if you ceaselessly torture yourself with the other choices you could have made, but didn't.
I'll make plenty of wrong decisions. I'll fail and fall, mess up and misstep. But it's natural to life. To becoming. Mistakes aren't detours but a very part of the path itself.
Often, the best decision making advice is to just decide. Make a choice. Make it yours. Own it. And just trust that it will lead you to where you're meant to be.
That's my working definition of faith: The belief that I'll find my way to where I'm meant to go. Even if I don't see it yet. Even if I don't know how. Trusting my choices, my intuition, and the opportunities that come to me are all leading to a path uniquely well-suited to me. Trusting the flow of events. Trusting life.
Epictetus: Faithfulness is the antidote to bitterness and confusion.
I guess I'm trying to have a little more faith and a lot more self-trust.
Own the life I'm living, the choices I've made, where I am. And just love it because it's mine.
I'm here and I'm living it.
❓ question i’m asking:
What has been the best hour of my week? How can I make it easier to have more hours like that?
📸 photo of the week:
My good friend J sent these to me on his travels because he loved the architecture in Singapore.
It's a fascinating blend of the natural world and the modern world.
It also shows how much more beautiful cities could be with a bit more care and intention.
Thank you for reading!
Each week, I share fragments of my heart and soul to try and make your day just a little more beautiful than it was before.
Spread the love—If you want to support my work, the best way to do so is by sharing it with others who would enjoy it. Beyond that, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it.
Get in touch—If my writing resonated or if you just want to be friends, please reach out 😊 Reply to this email, leave a comment, or find me on Twitter!
Much love to you and yours,
Tommy
This was powerful. Excited to see what brilliance emerges from your total focus on writing!