Month: August 2024

I read a story of someone who was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes at 38. Instead of accepting things as they were, she became disciplined in what she ate, exercised, monitored her blood sugar, and turned her whole life around. She lost 100 pounds, is now expecting her first child, and is in love. 

She said the diabetes ended up being the best thing to ever happen to her. 

Not every bad outcome is a death sentence. And while we can’t see the end of our journey, sometimes a near-death experience, a mistake, a lost job, the end of a relationship, or a diagnosis could be the end of one thing and just the beginning of something else that is great and wonderful. It could, in fact, be the catalyst for change. 

If you are spending more than one hour a day on social media, you are severely opening yourself up to unhappiness, anxiety, propaganda, and so forth.

Even then, the effects can be catastrophic for some people.

So the question isn’t just how much but what kind of social media. Someone spending all their time watching Fox News Reels is having a completely different experience from the user asking relevant questions about a book club in their neighborhood. Everything else is junk food media that has seduced us to believe we are being informed.

In this case: quantity and quality matter.

Sometimes, love can hurt so deeply when it is not reciprocated.

What often happens here is that we can love the idea of someone—not the actual person.

It’s an important distinction to make because people change, and those drunk with love can impair their judgment.

My favorite band recently released a new record. And it got me thinking…

The short, scary realization of AI isn’t the rise of Terminators. But how well is mediocre work already being replaced? What a mediocre book on any subject! You can have it in seconds. But is it any good? Not yet at least. Which means…

The space left (and continuing to be open) is remarkable work. Remarkable people doing remarkable things are still in demand.

Security is the safety net we put underneath us.

And yet, it can often trick us into believing we are safe. Sure, there’s an argument to be made for “safer.” Anyone without a safety net would happily trade for one if you got a spare.

We get so caught up in thinking the search is for safety nets, contingencies on top of contingencies, until a hurricane comes and wipes out everything we have built.

The point is we work so hard to prepare for a future that 1) we might not get to enjoy and 2) that is uncertain.

It’s truly a delicate act to balance the present and the future. To live in the moment and to have an eye for the future. Even for those who are not born yet.

In 1902, William Carrier invented the first modern air conditioning unit. What it allowed was more than just the ability to control the temperature in a room. Once AC became ubiquitous in part of the design of houses and commercial buildings, it fundamentally changed the landscape of where people can live. No longer do you have a small select group of people that live in Phoenix, Arizona. Now, nearly five million people live there. During the summer months, you can move from one space to another without ever having to experience 72-degree weather. What Carrier could not have known, this also changed the political landscape. Many Republicans who were not re-elected moved to areas like Florida, Texas, and so on to continue their political careers.

What other side effects does AC have? It turns out that nearly 4% of greenhouse gasses that are emitted are caused by air conditioning. What it also does is insulate us from how hot (or cold) our environment really is. This is another step in disconnecting us from our natural environment, one of the biggest mental hurdles in the climate crisis. The perception isn’t the reality. For example, when power was lost in Texas in 2021, citizens were instantly reminded of the harshness of their living environment. In 1995, during the Chicago heatwave, 700 people died because their AC units quit working.

The bottom line is that we have simultaneously conquered the environment in a world of innovation. Not the entire environment, of course. But there is a reason why wolves don’t run around Utah anymore. And sitting on top of the food chain makes us think we are invincible.

We forget the world is a harsh place to live. The further removed we put ourselves away from it, the more likely we are to treat it as a nuisance instead of reality.

I read a lot. And one of the things that puts me into the mood to classic literature is to learn about the author.

What were they thinking while writing this book?

Perhaps, the thing that I find myself pondering the most is how sad this writer was at the time of their writing.

Strange to think about but when I imagine how sad Marcel Proust was when writing À la recherche du temps perdu, even 100 years later, I can relate to the human experience.

Of coruse, that sadness isn’t the only emotion. When Edward Abbey wrote Monkey Wrench Gang, he was writing to preserve and defend the southwest ecology. I imagine the anger he must of felt watching the west turn into an amusement park.

The passing of knowledge to each generation, especially through books, is a responsibility each of us have. We are not really around long enough for a personal legacy. But the legacy of passing the torch from generation to generation is a privilage. Books are a way to remember the past, and light the future of possibility.

The research is clear, the more choices we have the worst we feel.

It’s interesting to think that 20 years ago, if you were told you can watch any televsion series, any movie, play any record at any place at any time–we would of said, “Yeah, I’ll take that deal.”

And yet, the amount of choices we have makes it so overwhelming to what to do next. We all have been victims of Netflix scrolling.

This idea that opportunity cost, that I could be doing something better, bleeds into our psyche. We don’t want to get it wrong and so we suffer instead of being satisfied with the choice of A or B. Make no mistake having an abundance of choice is a good thing. Especially, when we compare it to those who are robbed of any choice. (And I am not simply talking about entertainment.)

The world is now full of access to choice on where to live, who to date, what to pay attention too, and so on, we forget that wasn’t what it was just a mere two decades ago. It is also making us miserable in search of best or perfect instead of good or better.

We all want is best but when scrolling to find a partner is that this person over here might be 5% better and leads to an ecosystem where 90% of the dating activity is for 10% of the men, then there is a problem. When someone can with a few clicks apply for 40 jobs in one day, then we are not looking for meaningful work, we are spamming for it. And when you can’t decide what to eat tonight on Door Dash, because you are paralyzed with the amount of places we could eat, well the trade-off is to go hungry.

No one then is happy.

We overcomplicate these decisions, when simply flipping a coin and have fate decide can often be enough to make us happy.

A time horizon is simply the length of time an investor plans to hold an investment before selling it.

But for more of a practical application:

The longer we wait for a return on an investment, the more patience is required.

However…

When deciding when to quit, we often don’t consider an opportunity to do something else.

It’s never easy to decide whether to quit. There is no telling how things could turn out if we had the guts to stick it out a bit longer.

But I have learned over the years that people really underestimate the power of opportunity costs (the resources that could be spent on something else) and sunk costs (what’s gone is gone, and it isn’t coming back, so cut your losses now).

I wrote a while ago about how “passion” means “to suffer.”

“Com” means “with” or “together.”

In other words, Compassion is to “suffer together.”

The problem with suffering is that we work so hard to avoid it. Understanding that suffering is the default setting of life is more productive. But suffering together is way better than doing it alone.