☕ saturday mornings - september 9, 2023
being alone, pretending & de-atomization
Happy Saturday!
I hope you’re having a beautiful start to your weekend.
Is it too early to get a pumpkin spice latte? (asking for a friend)
What I’ve been up to:
I've been working my way through David Perell's 7-part lecture series on the French philosopher René Girard. Girard's ideas are as terrifying as they are brilliant.
I started teaching myself guitar. I've been thinking a lot about cultivating hobbies. Trying new things. Especially in the evenings—learning a skill instead of plugging in and zoning out. It's the difference between pleasure and enjoyment.
I bought a Fitbit. I've read about how the modern world only values what we can quantify. Hence, the decline of emphasis on aesthetic beauty in architecture and cities. But, if this is true, how can you quantify things important to you to place more value on them? (A Fitbit measures exercise and sleep).
Write of Passage is starting to pick up and I'm pretty pumped.
Here are the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
American poet Charles Bukowski on being alone:
“And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want.
What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
📚 book passage i loved:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
💡 idea from me: fear at the centre
Near the end of my in-home meditation retreat, a day of complete solitude and silence, 8 hours of meditation, I was taking a nap.
(Because all that breathing is tiring, you know?)
In a half-asleep, half-awake, somewhat conscious haze, I experienced a sudden revelation: at the heart of all suffering, all my suffering, was fear.
Fear of not living as well as I could. Fear of the terms life has given me. Fear of nothingness for an indeterminate unconscious eternity.
For those brief moments, I felt like a small, terrified child again.
Scared to live, scared to die.
Or, as philosopher Ernest Becker would call it, fear of insignificance and fear of impermanence.
My friend Nic and I came to the same realization that fear lies underneath all negative emotion. Once you peel back the layers, fear is at the core.
It's an ancient idea. Fear and desire are the two emotions by which all life is governed.
Adam felt fear, Even felt desire—transcending fear and desire is the path back into the Garden of Eden. They are the two guardians at the gate to the tree of immortal life, Buddha seated under it. In Dante's Divine Comedy, hell is the place of those fixed to their fears and desires, who can't pass through to eternity.
The challenge with epiphanies, illuminations, sudden moments of clarity is not having them but handling them.
If they're true. Loving them. Keeping them. Cultivating them.
❓ question i’m asking:
Where in my life can I integrate rather than atomize?
When we engage in activities that integrate multiple facets of our lives, it leads to more happiness versus when we individuate and optimize everything we do.
It's the difference between going for an hour bike ride with friends vs. 20-minute Peloton sprints. Working at a coffee shop with co-workers vs. deep work sessions with "focus music" pounding through noise-canceling headphones. A long drawn-out dinner with family vs. chugging Soylent at your desk in-between Microsoft Excel shortcuts.
Unintuitively, slowness and inefficiency are more enjoyable than speed and efficiency.
As Nat Eliason writes, "The more creatively we can integrate the various parts of life that matter to us, the more satisfied we’ll be in our day to day. The more we atomize, the more lonely and overwhelmed we start to feel."
Integrated living is more rewarding than atomic living.
📸 photo of the week:
This caught my eye while I was touring the historic Banff Springs Hotel.
I loved the intense attention to detail. The gold embossing. The time and energy and devotion poured into a mail chute.
While mail is no longer our primary means of communication, it’s a far cry from the current aesthetic.
The Lion and Unicorn is the coat of arms of the United Kingdom.
Created in 1603, when the King of Scotland became King of England. The lion (England) and unicorn (Scotland) represents the union of two opposites — two formerly warring nations.
Dieu et mon droit imprinted underneath (which means 'God and my right') implies the King has a God-given right to rule.
I love how you can learn about the decline of beauty, Canada’s colonization, the history of England, and the link between power and divinity, just by studying a mail chute.
Reality has a surprising amount of detail. Anything becomes interesting if you zoom in enough.
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Much love,
Tommy
I've never really thought of fear as the core driver of many emotions. I'll have to sit with that for a bit.
As for integrating, I'm coincidentally going to meet up with some friends to work on our personal websites for the evening. It's something we can totally do in isolation, but one of us proposed that we do it together and that sounds like a wonderful idea.
Bellissimo, Tommy. Happy Saturday my friend