☕ saturday mornings - march 25, 2023

responsibility, a good life & sweet memories

Tommy Dixon

Mar 25, 2023

Happy Saturday!

I hope you’re having an excellent start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

I began the Self-Authoring Suite, a research-backed program that harnesses the power of writing to help you explore your past, present, and future.
I also started Daniel Vassallo's two-week course, Building a Portfolio of Small Bets. This week, we learned how to operate in a world of randomness and increase your probability of success.
I'm heading up to a friend's cottage for a weekend of relaxing, hiking, and good conversation.

Here's a recap of the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.

Enjoy.

✍️ quote i’m pondering:

Goethe, German 18th century writer, on personal responsibility:

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

📚 book passage i loved:

A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love.
These things cannot be bought. They must be earned.

― The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

💡 essay from me: sweet memory

I've been stopping by a local hockey rink on my afternoon walks recently. I love the cold, crisp air. The smell of fresh ice. The comforting quiet. Just the mellow hum of a single generator. Boards covered in puck marks and ads for local auto shops. A lone 2007 championship banner hung proudly from the rafters. Rubber floors, locker rooms, and Zambonis. Memories from a past life.

Aurelius: Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.

I've always been a nostalgic person. I often reminisce about the past: trips with family, weekends with friends, and mornings with myself. I tend to gloss over the bad parts. Remember only the sweetness. Those brief moments of joy and laughter and connection, that dot our past like stars in a clear night sky. Life can be tedious. We have inescapable obligations: bills to pay, meetings to attend, things to get done. But those sparse seconds of bliss define our experience.

Finitude, the reality these moments will never come again, the stubborn forward march of time, only adds to the splendor of what we have experienced. And the profound beauty of remembering. "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."

The other day I read: "The purpose of life is to experience things for which you will later experience nostalgia."

Nostalgia melds life into this beautiful story. Filled with people you love, experiences you cherish, moments you'll never forget. A smile tugs at the edges of your mouth just in remembering. Memories can be a precious refuge to come home to. A reminder of life's fullness.

But I've become wary of memories.

Remembering, by definition, pulls you out of the present and into the past.

The past is a scorecard you use to measure and judge your present. And because we tend to photoshop our memories, smoothing out the rough edges, your current experience often feels inferior to your past experience.

I've been caught up reminiscing about my travels. Browsing old photos, retelling old stories, thinking old thoughts. Working long hours indoors in cold Canada, it's hard not to achingly miss enjoying the early morning sunshine and growing warmth of the day while sipping a frothy espresso at some cobblestone cafe in Italy.

It feels good while you're in the memory, but, almost like crashing from some drug-induced high, you return to reality a bit discontented. A bit remorseful. A bit sad.

Naval: Memory is a burden from the past preventing us from living freely in the present... I just don’t believe in anything from my past. Anything. No memories. No regrets. No people. No trips. Nothing. A lot of our unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the present.

The past is dangerous because, despite its comforting glow, it overshadows and darkens your current reality. It spurs desire. A wanting to be somewhere else, other than where you are now. It spoils your ability to embrace the present moment. The reality of what is, and the way it is.

We only truly have our present experience. The future is impossible to see and the past is gone. We live only now, in this brief instant.

The past is like fiction. Memories become distant. Almost estranged. You can think back to it or look at old photos, but it’s blurred, fuzzy. It feels like a lot of my past was experienced by someone who I know, but isn't me.

You can never really save anything. It all becomes lost to the evaporation of time.

I still stop by the local hockey rink on my walks. It's a connection to my past. A life once lived. It's comforting. To bask in the distant memories. To retrace old footsteps. But, I try to let these memories be. In their proper place on my timeline. With no desire to pull them forward. No attempt to cling to them. No need to relive them. Because they've already happened. They've already passed. And life would lose most of its meaning without its stubborn irreversibility.

To just feel. Not think. Enjoy the warmth of the past, with no need to change anything about the present moment.