☕ saturday mornings - may 20, 2023

unspoken beliefs, freedom & cardinal weaknesses

Happy Saturday!

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

Today officially marks the two-year anniversary of this newsletter since the first edition was sent out on May 22, 2021.

Thank you for supporting me on this unexpected journey. I appreciate you.

What I’ve been up to:

• I went to a Blink-182 concert Monday in Toronto with a good friend. "I Miss You" still hits as hard as it did in high school.

• I'm rounding into the final week of Write of Passage and the altMBA.

• I published an essay on the danger of excessive thinking and reflection. While there's value in exploring the inner self, turning outwards and seeing the world from a posture of wonder and awe is incredibly underrated. I'm calling it "death by introspection".

Here's an inside look at the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.

Enjoy.

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✍️ quote i’m pondering:

David Foster Wallace, one of my favourite writers, on uniqueness:

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”

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📚 book passage i loved:

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

― This is Water by David Foster Wallace

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💡 idea from me: cardinal weaknesses

John J. Audubon’s Birds of America (1827-1838)

As long as I can remember, I took school seriously.

I'd be assigned a school project, maybe a presentation on Ancient Egypt, and I'd race home, pull up a big wooden chair to our dining room table, drop my pile of library books I'd gathered, and get to work reading about mummies and pharaohs.

At 6pm, my Dad would walk in the front door and see me working away, head down, tongue creasing the edge of my mouth, absorbed in the project.

"Tommy, you have to put your things away. You have hockey practice in an hour."

"I can't go. Too busy. I need to finish this project."

"When's it due?"

"Two weeks."

My Dad can't tell this story without cracking a smile.

Cardinal (not the red bird or catholic clergyman) traces back to the Latin root cardinalis or hinge. It's used to denote something foundational. Something so important that other things are based on it.

I think we all have cardinal weaknesses. Threads that weave through a lot of our struggles. Likely, they've been part of us since we were children.

Mine are some combination of: taking things too seriously, being too hard on myself, and overthinking into oblivion.

If I'm having a tough time, usually one or all of these are in play

Often, the weaknesses we struggle with most are fused to our strengths. Our darkest qualities are the counterpart of our most potent gifts.

Graham Duncan: “Everyone’s genius is right next to their dysfunction.”

Taking things seriously, pushing myself to perform, and thinking a lot have been the drivers of my success. Yet, they can also cause anguish.

Last May, I was sitting on the Spanish steps in Rome, musing on what I could write that you would find interesting, and I was hit with the rush epiphany: most of my problems don't need immediate solutions, they need perspective.

In other words, if I was in an elevated state of mind, my problems wouldn't feel like problems. 

I have a theory that the solution to struggle lies in confronting my cardinal weaknesses because it's precisely these weaknesses that warp my perspective.

Despite the variety of challenges or obstacles I may face, the first step to solving almost all of them is: don't take it so seriously, don't be so hard on yourself, don't think too much.

Like the decor that my Mom hangs in our kitchen says: Relax. Smile. Laugh. Love. Have fun.

Looking back, I don't even remember my project on Ancient Egypt.

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❓ question i’m asking:

Am I disappointing myself instead of disappointing someone else?

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📸 photo of the week:

The Great Wave off Kanagawa - Print by Hokusai

A new addition to my room! (The wall is still a work in progress…)

Coincidentally, this piece of art was featured in the first edition of saturday mornings, two years ago today.

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Thank you for reading!

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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