Wisdom for the end of the
year
Instead of a regular
edition, here's a holiday
special, featuring seven of
the most powerful snippets
I've added recently to my
digital equivalent of a commonplace
book. I think of all of
these as "practical wisdom":
they're not tips or
techniques to be
implemented, but nor are
they merely of intellectual
interest; for me, anyway,
they're the kind of
perspective-shifting words
that make a concrete
difference to daily life, at
least when I call them to
mind. (Close readers of this
newsletter and/or Four
Thousand Weeks may
have encountered some of
them before, but I think
they bear repeating.)
I'm extremely grateful for
your ongoing interest in The
Imperfectionist and my other
writing. Please have as
delightful a holiday as
possible in these bizarre
times, and see you on the
other side…
– Oliver
On beating yourself up as a
strategy for avoiding
life
"Our self-aggression is not
just a relic from the past;
it’s something we choose to
reinvest in, over and over,
every moment. We actually
maintain a practice, with
great effort, of being
aggressive toward who we
find ourselves to be. If we
can become curious about the
function this serves, if we
invite greater awareness,
then we might find that we
can work with our issues
much more skillfully and
kindly… Claiming that we are
problematic means we don’t
have to engage with our
lives fully, because we
aren’t 'ready yet' — there’s
something wrong that needs
to be fixed first. [So] we
have a good excuse to not
show up. And it turns out
that really showing up—being
fully present, embodied,
openhearted—is often a very
intense experience. Having a
complaint also gives us an
explanation for our
difficult experience—and if
there’s a cause, there
should be a solution. 'I
should be able to have the
life without disturbance
that I deserve once this
unfair problem is cleaned
up.' It allows us to
continue our disengagement
indefinitely, since there
will always be some unfair
problem in our lives" – Bruce
Tift
Why not give up the search
for the perfect productivity
system?
"Every productivity system
stops working eventually and
there’s nothing you can do
about it… Most productivity
tricks develop aversion
around them. All of them
lose salience. The only way
to avoid encountering
problems with productivity
is to make the stuff you
want to be doing in the
long-term to be the most
exciting stuff you can do at
any moment in time, which is
perhaps possible if you,
e.g. work at a startup, but
is untenable in almost every
situation" – Alexey
Guzey
Writing advice: forgive
yourself. *Then keep
going*
"…9. Every writer starts in
the same place on Day One:
Super excited, and ready for
greatness. On Day Two, every
writer looks at what she
wrote on Day One and hates
herself. What separates
working writers from
non-working writers is that
working writers return to
their task on Day Three.
What gets you there is not
pride but mercy. Show
yourself forgiveness for not
being good enough. Then keep
going.
10. Be willing to let it be
easy. You might be
surprised"
– Elizabeth
Gilbert
On the true purpose of
childhood
“Because children grow up,
we think a child’s purpose
is to grow up. But a child’s
purpose is to be a child.
Nature doesn’t disdain what
lives only for a day. It
pours the whole of itself
into the each moment. We
don’t value the lily less
for not being made of flint
and built to last. Life’s
bounty is in its flow. Later
is too late. Where is the
song when it’s been sung?
The dance when it’s been
danced? It’s only we humans
who want to own the future,
too. We persuade ourselves
that the universe is
modestly employed in
unfolding our destination.
We note the haphazard chaos
of history by the day, by
the hour, but there is
something wrong with the
picture. Where is the unity,
the meaning, of nature’s
highest creation? Surely
those millions of little
streams of accident and
willfulness have their
correction in the vast
underground river which,
without a doubt, is carrying
us to the place where we’re
expected? But there is no
such place. That’s why it’s
called Utopia" – Tom
Stoppard
On the cruelty of a life
spent trying to save
time
"I hate having to wait for
people to get on and off the
elevator, an experience I
face multiple times a day
living in a high-rise
apartment building. This
daily ordeal brings out the
worst in me—I have glowered,
I have rolled my eyes, I
have sighed in contempt at
strangers… My excuse was
that they were wasting my
time, and wasted time makes
me anxious. But willing
myself to stop stressing
about the almighty Schedule
only left me feeling more
frantic than before. Then,
one day, I failed to hold
the elevator door open for
someone running to catch it.
With a triumphant buoyancy,
I watched the man hurry
toward doors sliding shut—I
didn’t so much as lift a
finger to stop them. As I
and the otherwise empty
elevator ascended to my
apartment, a dark anxiety
descended upon me—the same
angst that always crept into
my crabby elevator… That’s
when the light went on for
me: my elevator angst was
less a stress response to
wasting time and more the
aftershocks of my nastiness
toward others. I began to
observe my feelings and
reactions in the coming
days. It always happened so
fast, but it was true: I
felt more anxious after a
moment of cruelty, even if
my cruelty resulted in
saving time. It forced me to
conclude that my recurrent
elevator anxiety had little
to do with a squandered
schedule and much more to do
with the effort it took to
act like a civil human being
in the elevator rather than
a crazed time snatcher. Of
course, none of this is easy
to share, but I’m not alone
in these tendencies. Not
everyone has to wait for an
elevator every day, but
there are grocery lines and
strong-willed toddlers and
traffic jams. All of human
development can be summed up
as the process of learning
we are not the sole
protagonist in the story:
other people exist"
– Nicole
Roccas
On life's
inconceivability
"Before the modern period,
it was perhaps clearer that
even an ordinary life can’t
be fully conceived. Major
events often bore neither a
signature nor a sensible
explanation. People met
plague, famine, and war and
didn’t have full information
about what was going on.
They might think that plague
had something to do with
rats, or was related to an
unfavorable conjunction of
the stars, but they had no
way to test their
assumptions. The
inconceivable nature of the
world becomes obvious in
times of catastrophe, yet it
is always present. We cannot
fully conceive of the
functioning even of common
objects, like a hand or a
banana. The old teachers
thought that what is
inconceivable to us is,
ultimately, the only thing
that we can genuinely rely
on. In this way they managed
to find happiness inside
disaster and peace inside
war. When disaster is here,
and you want to be happy,
the happiness has to happen
here, the dancing and the
music here, even while there
is disaster. Where else
would you find happiness?" – John
Tarrant
The whole problem
“It's not that we have too
little time to do all the
things we need to do. It's
that we feel the need to do
too many things in the time
we have"
– Gary
Keller