☕ saturday mornings - may 6, 2023
dawn of the world, pain & life lessons
Happy Saturday!
I hope you’re having a lovely start to your first weekend of May.
What I’ve been up to:
I'm at the halfway point of Write of Passage and the altMBA, working more than I have since I was an intern at a hedge fund.
I published a short 700-word essay on why the true rewards of reading are reserved for those who read slowly. I must've written +4,000 words, re-wrote each sentence three times, and scrapped 8 drafts. It's one of the most challenging essays I've written.
My beloved Toronto Maple Leafs have made it to the 2nd round of the NHL playoffs for the first time since I was 3 years old. I've caught parts of each game, watching with bated breath.
Here's an inside look at the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.
Enjoy.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, science fiction writer, offers a theory of life:
"My own personal theory is that this is the very dawn of the world.
We're hardly more than an eyeblink away from the fall of Troy, and scarcely an interglaciation removed from the Altamira cave painters. We live in extremely interesting ancient times.
I like this idea. It encourages us to be earnest and ingenious and brave, as befits ancestral peoples; but keeps us from deciding that because we don't know all the answers, they must be unknowable and thus unprofitable to pursue."
Here’s how far away you are from famous people in history:
📚 book passage i loved:
And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
― The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
I must've re-read this four times.
💡 idea from me: make your mistakes
I was supposed to be in Omaha this weekend.
Since July, after a wine-infused dinner near the bank of the Douro River in Porto sparked the idea, I'd been planning the trip with a friend. We would drive 14 hours west into America's Heartland to attend Berkshire Hathaway's Annual Shareholder Meeting. See Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, two of the greatest investors of all time, in the flesh, before they retire or pass away (Munger is 99!).
I love road trips. I love road trips with friends even more. And I love road trips with friends through the U.S. the most. Looking out the window for cool road signs. Noticing the subtle differences of each state as they fade into each other. Getting out of the car to stretch and being hit by the new and unfamiliar surroundings.
It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But, I didn't go. I couldn't go.
I overloaded myself with work. Fighting a tsunami of writing assignments, zoom meetings, and marketing milestones, I'm pulling 80 hour work weeks just to stay afloat. With no spare time, I couldn't take four days off to drive to Nebraska.
It's a painful lesson to learn. But necessary.
I was talking with my friend Andy about how sometimes the only way out is through.
I think my pursuit of knowledge has fostered an aversion to learning things the hard way. A desire to skip past the pain of learning experientially, waltz through life without the scrapes and bruises. A belief that if I read enough or think enough or listen enough I can avoid mistakes. That reason and rationality and reflection could save me from the pain of folly. But, I'm learning that's not true.
Mistakes are inevitable.
I can read books, listen to podcasts, ask mentors, call friends, but some things in life can only be learned through experience. I can be told the stove is hot, watch other people burn themselves, even study the thermodynamics behind heat induction, but I might have to press my hand to the flame to really learn: "I'm not doing that again".
I'm reminded of one of my favourite books, Zorba the Greek.
The narrator spent his whole life reading about things rather than doing them. Preparing for life rather than living it. Thinking rather than being. But, he feels utterly incomplete and hopelessly lost.
Then he meets Zorba, who can't read, but has gone on adventures and explored the world and gotten into trouble. He followed his heart instead of living in his mind. Zorba has arrived at answers to life, simply through his lived experience, that the narrator never found in books.
Zorba: Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.
On reflection, all of the deepest life lessons I've learned were through my own experience. They're deep precisely because I learned them through experience.
I could've sat 19-year old me down and lectured him for a day that he's not a natural-born investment banker. But he wouldn't listen. And if he did, the lesson wouldn't last. Ideas are just ideas until there's felt experience behind them.
I've only learned the power of authenticity through the pain of inauthenticity. Lessons through experience sink into your soul at a level that sheer intellect cannot reach.
With each mistake, we have the opportunity to reflect, figure out where we went wrong in our thinking and improve on our decision-making process to (hopefully) make less mistakes. Mess up. Learn. Move forward. Repeat.
Isabel: Own your decisions, make your mistakes, grow from what you learn, lean in, and make more decisions.
Life is really just this beautiful never-ending process of learning what feels good and what doesn't, and slowly, inch by inch then mile by mile, orienting closer to the centre of our true selves.
So maybe, just maybe, I'll learn my lesson and make the trip to Omaha next year.
❓ question i’m asking:
Recently, I read: if you’re feeling paralyzed about decisions for your future, it helps to start by forgiving the mistakes of your past.
Have you forgiven yourself for your mistakes? Or do you still kick yourself about the decisions you made in the past?
📸 photo of the week:
I had just completed my thorough bashing of modern architecture in last week's newsletter, when I was walking through Old Toronto (which isn't all that old) and saw St Andrew's Church, sharply contrasted against an office building in the background.
St Andrews was completed in 1876, designed in the Romanesque Revival style which was inspired by medieval architecture in Scotland.
It's one of the few buildings in the downtown core that has character.
Its exterior features polished columns made from Bay of Fundy red granite, richly decorated doorway arches, and distinctively Scottish flank tower turrets.
I ache at the thought of what Toronto could look like if it had more buildings that had the same detail and devotion, care and craftsmanship, patience and process that went into St Andrews.
Thank you for reading!
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Much love to you and yours,
Tommy