Deide, then follow the thread

Creativity, Life / /

“Once you make a choice, possibilities you haven’t yet imagined will reveal themselves.”

When D.H. Lawrence set off for Sardinia, his mind was already made up: he would write Sea and Sardinia.

He began the moment he arrived. No second-guessing, no circling around the question of whether Sardinia was the “right” subject. He simply wrote—what he saw, where he wandered, who he met. As Louise DeSalvo points out, there was no hesitation between decision and action. “It was never ‘Is writing a book about Sardinia the right thing to do?’ Instead, it was, ‘I’ll go to Sardinia and write about it.’”

This stunned DeSalvo. How much of her own energy had been wasted in indecision? She decided to practice deciding—and urged her students to do the same. “I’ve seen students waste precious writing time because they can’t decide to write about, say, their mother or their father; they want to wait until the subject seems right. I tell them, ‘Just choose. Once you make a choice, possibilities you haven’t yet imagined will reveal themselves.’”

Follow the thread

Elizabeth Gilbert was searching for a big idea for her next book.

She was waiting for inspiration to strike—goosebumps, butterflies, that unmistakable creative spark. But nothing came.

She asked herself, Is there anything you’re even a little bit interested in?

Well… maybe gardening. But only because she had just moved and was toying with the idea of planting a backyard garden—something that had never interested her before. “I didn’t desperately want a garden, understand. . . . I just thought a garden would be nice.”

The urge to plant a garden was small. “It barely had a pulse. But I didn’t ignore it. Instead, I followed that small clue of curiosity and I planted some things.”

Little by little, her curiosity grew. She traced the origin of her irises and learned they were native to Syria. Interesting. And she realized it wasn’t the gardening itself that pulled her in, but the stories behind the plants.

The more she followed this thread, the more doors opened. The right books appeared. The right people showed up. “For instance,” she writes, “the expert whose advice I needed to seek about the history of mosses lived—it turned out—only a few minutes from my grandfather’s house in rural upstate New York.” And tucked away in an old book she’d inherited from her great-grandfather was exactly what she needed: “a vivid historic character, worthy of embellishing into a novel.”

And just like that, a faint spark grew into a path she had to follow—one that carried her around the world.

“Three years of research and travel and investigation later, I finally sat down to begin writing The Signature of All Things—a novel about a fictional family of nineteenth-century botanical explorers.” It was a novel she never saw coming. “It had started with nearly nothing. I did not leap into that book with my hair on fire; I inched toward it, clue by clue. But by the time I looked up from my scavenger hunt and began to write, I was completely consumed with passion about nineteenth-century botanical exploration.”

Sometimes you just gotta start…

In When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead, Jerry Weintraub, Frank Sinatra’s manager, recalls how Frank would sink into deep lows and stay there.

One morning, Jerry got a call from Frank. He was down. He’d spent the night brooding on the roof, worn out by the grind. “The same thing, every day and night, going down to that same theater and singing the same songs to the same crowds, ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ ‘Chicago,’ I just don’t care.”

Jerry flew to Vegas that very day. When they met on the rooftop, Frank opened up—drink in one hand, cigarette in the other—saying maybe he just needed a rest.

“It’s not a rest you need,” Jerry said. “It’s a new hill to climb.”

Jerry understood Frank’s nature. He thrived when he had something to push against—an impossible task, a critic to silence. “You’re bored,” Jerry told him. “You need a challenge.”

“All right,” Frank replied. “What do you have in mind?”

Jerry told him he had a great idea—but he’d need a few days to work it out.

“No, no, what is it?” Frank pressed. “You’ve got to tell me.”

“Look, I really do have a great idea, but I need a few days.”

“Of course,” Jerry writes, “I did not have a great idea. I had no idea at all, but I knew that Frank needed a great idea less than he needed the prospect of a great idea, the promise of an event that would lift him out of his funk.”

Frank wouldn’t let him off the hook. “Tell me, Jerry. You’ve got to tell me.”

“So,” as Jerry tells it, “I started talking, improvising…

‘We’re going to do Madison Square Garden,’ I said.

‘Yeah, so what? We’ve done Madison Square Garden before. What’s so great about that?’

‘Now wait, Frank, hold on, let me tell you how we’re going to do it…’

I kicked my voice up a notch, going into full ringmaster mode.

‘…We’re going to do it live, Frank! Live!’

‘Yeah, so what? We’re live every night. That’s show business.’

‘Yes, but we’re never live like this,’ I said, ‘on every television in America and all across the world.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah…’

And now that I had gotten the thread I was gone.

‘And let’s do it in the center of the Garden,’ I told him, ‘on the floor, in a boxing ring.’

‘A boxing ring? What are you talking about?’

‘I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. You’re the heavyweight champion of the world, Frank. You hold every belt in the world of entertainment. The number-one singer in the world. No challengers, no one even close. So let’s do it in a ring, and make it like a heavyweight title fight, and invite all the people who go to heavyweight title fights, because they’re your fans. And let’s get Howard Cosell to be the announcer. Yeah, wow, I can hear it!’

‘Hear what, Jerry? What can you hear?’

‘I can hear Howard Cosell. He’s ringside, his hand over his ear, announcing it as you come down the aisle, climb through the ropes and into the ring: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, live from Madison Square Garden. Jerry Weintraub presents Sinatra, The Main Event.’

‘And here’s the best part,’ I told Frank. ‘No rehearsals.’

‘No rehearsals.’

‘No rehearsals. You just get there on the night of the show and sing your songs, and do your thing, as fresh and spontaneous as can be—like a heavyweight title fight. Frank Sinatra Live!’”

“The Main Event” became one of the era’s most iconic concerts—Sinatra, in a boxing ring, at the heart of his city, telling his life story in song. And it all started on the rooftop of Caesars—with Sinatra lost in a fog of despair, and Jerry “talking and talking.”

“Maybe this is an old Bronx thing,” Jerry reflects. “You just have to open your mouth and start talking. I can’t tell you how many jams I’ve gotten out of by talking, seeing where the words would take me. ‘What are we going to do about it? Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do about it…’ And I open my mouth and see what happens.” He made decisions and followed where they led.

Books read this month

Reading / /

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst
The sea has a way of stripping life down to its essentials—danger, luck, courage, despair. A Marriage at Sea is the true story of a married couple who, in 1972, set out to sail the Pacific, a lifelong dream. Everything was going great…until a whale smashed into them, tore a hole in their boat, and sent it to the bottom. Suddenly they were stranded at sea. For months. What unfolds is a tale of love and boredom, despair and stubborn optimism, and the sheer grit it takes to survive. It’s a survival story that reads as easily as a novel.

How To Think Like Socrates by Donald J. Robertson
After reading Paul Johnson’s Socrates last month—I wrote what I loved about it here—I wanted to go deeper, so I picked up How To Think Like Socrates. I’d even started last month’s newsletter with a story from it that really stuck with me. Robertson’s book was longer and more historical than Johnson’s, which I appreciated for the added context. Along the way, I also read Socrates by Anthony Gottlieb, a used copy I bought for a few dollars at Noley’s bookstore while on vacation in Payson, AZ. You never know when a book will come in handy!

With the Old Breed by E. B. Sledge
After finishing the phenomenal Company K last month, I found myself still in the mood for war writing. With the Old Breed is called one of the most unflinching memoirs of World War II, and now I understand why. Sledge writes plainly about what he witnessed and felt while fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa—battles whose necessity has long been questioned—and you can’t help but shake your head in amazement at the bravery…and the waste.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
As you know, I love a good memoir. I really enjoyed this one, especially how she wove her poems throughout. The title comes from a line in her poem “Good Bones”—one of my favorites—which Meryl Streep read at the Academy of American Poets’ fifteenth annual Poetry & the Creative Mind gala. This book is about heartache and rebuilding, and finding beauty where it feels hardest to see.

Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor by Donald J. Robertson
I enjoyed How To Think Like Socrates so much that I picked up another book of Robertson’s: Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor. We imagine Marcus Aurelius as the all-powerful philosopher-king—which he was—but Robertson’s telling of how Marcus grew to know and practice Stoicism paints him as human—flawed like the rest of us.

Marcus learned from Epictetus, who had learned from Socrates, that philosophy should never be an abstract, theoretical pursuit. It should be practical, aimed at making a person better. Better how? Not a better wrestler or academic, but—as Marcus wrote—“a better citizen, a better person, a better resource in tight places, a better forgiver of faults.” For Marcus, philosophy was the work of overcoming vices like vanity and anger, and through constant moral self-examination he became the man we know today.

This is something I try to always remember

Life, Philosophy / /

There’s a story about Socrates’ teenage son, Lamprocles, who complained bitterly that his mother—Socrates’ famously fiery wife—nagged him nonstop.

Socrates, ever the philosopher, gently questioned his son until he admitted she was a loving mother who had his best interests at heart. Even so, Lamprocles maintained he couldn’t stand the constant scolding.

Then Socrates asked a question that, according to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist Donald J. Robertson, was nothing short of ingenious: “Do actors in tragedies take offense when other characters insult and verbally abuse them?” He notes that the insults hurled onstage were far worse than anything Lamprocles’ mother ever said.

The boy thought this was a silly question. It was obvious they didn’t take offense. The actors knew it was only a performance; no real harm was intended.

“That’s correct,” replied Socrates, “but didn’t you admit just a few moments earlier that you don’t believe your mother really means you any harm either?”

With a few well-placed questions, as Robertson writes in his wonderful book How to Think Like Socrates, “Socrates helped Lamprocles to examine his anger from a radically different perspective. When assumptions that fuel our anger begin to seem puzzling to us, our thinking can become more flexible, and we may begin to break free from the grip of unhealthy emotions.”

So, what if we got better at leaving things uncertain? What if we stopped rushing to judgment?

This kind of perspective shift is easier when the challenge is circumstantial. When plans fall through, when a door closes, when life doesn’t go as expected, we can take a breath and trust that time will reveal meaning. We remind ourselves that life often has its reasons.

But bringing that same calm to our relationships is harder. When someone’s words sting or their actions feel unjust, detachment doesn’t come naturally. We’re wired to take things personally, to collect evidence for our hurt, to seek justice.

And yet, as Socrates reminded his son, what we see on the surface is rarely the whole truth. We don’t know the full story playing out behind someone’s eyes. Pausing to hold space for that mystery softens us, makes us kinder. That softness is not weakness but wisdom. Clarity.

And clarity and kindness are inseparable.

It’s like that bit of Chinese wisdom: Clarity can be obtained only in a kind person. A person can be kind only with clarity.One helps the other.

One of the most haunting, beautiful stories I’ve ever read about appearance versus reality comes from William March’s masterful novel, Company K—a mosaic of war stories in which each chapter is a different soldier’s account of the front lines.

Private Allan Methot, once an aspiring poet, complained that the “spiritual isolation” of army life was unbearable. He couldn’t talk to anyone. No one could understand him. His fellow soldiers repulsed him—they seemed to care only about food, sleep, alcohol, and women.

As if that weren’t bad enough, he was assigned night watch duty with Private Danny O’Leary—whom he found hopelessly dull.

Methot wrote that O’Leary’s eyes were “unlit by intelligence” and that “he would stand there stupidly and stare at me, his heavy brows drawn together, his thick lips opened like an idiot’s.” Any attempt at conversation was futile. When Methot spoke to O’Leary, “he lowered his eyes, as if ashamed of me, and stared at the duckboards, fumbling at his rifle. . . .” When O’Leary finally spoke, it was to ask Methot when he thought they might get paid.

Methot laughed in contempt. How alone he was! It was as if he lived among aliens. His account ends in despair. He climbed out of the trench and walked slowly toward enemy lines, reciting poems aloud, waiting for the moment when a soldier’s boot would crush his “frail skull.”

And then, in the very next chapter, came Private Danny O’Leary’s letter to Methot.

In it, O’Leary wrote that Methot’s poems were the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. He thanked Methot for his friendship, saying that his faith in him had changed his life.

His letter is so devastatingly beautiful that it’s worth writing in full:

“I would like you so see me now, Allan Methot: I would like you to see what you have created!—For you did create me more completely than the drunken longshoreman from whose loins I once issued.

I was so gross, so stupid; and then you came along—How did you know? How could you look through layer upon layer until you saw the faint spark that was hidden in me? . . . Do you remember the nights on watch together when you recited Shelley and Wordsworth?—Your voice cadencing the words was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I wanted to speak to you, to tell you that I understood, to let you know your faith in me would not be wasted, but I dared not.—I could not think of you as a human being like myself, or the other men of the company. . . . I thought of you as someone so much finer than we that I would stand dumb in your presence, wishing that a German would jump into the trench to kill you, so that I might put my body between you and the bullet. . . . I would stand there fumbling my rifle, hoping that you would speak the beautiful lines forever. . . . ‘I will learn to read!’ I thought. ‘When war is over, I will learn to read! . . .’

Where are you now, Allan? I want you to see me.—Your friendship was not wasted; your faith has been justified. . . . Where are you, great heart? . . . Why don’t you answer me?”

Whoa.

As I mentioned, this story really stuck with me. Whenever I talk with someone now—the cashier at the grocery store, a friend, my brother—I try to imagine the boundless intelligence and light behind their eyes. The infinite treasures and possibilities just below the surface.

The paradox is that what’s most mysterious—uncertain, unlabeled, unknown—is often what’s most real. It’s what most closely resembles life itself.

I try to remember that clarity is probably more about what I cannot see than what I can.

And somehow, that simple truth—that I know so little—makes me calmer, kinder, and happier.

Books read this month

Reading / /

Company K by William March
I pulled this off my bookshelf at random while looking for the next book to read, and after skimming a few pages, I was sucked in. It’s considered one of the best war books of all time for a reason. Each chapter (and they’re short chapters) is a different soldier’s account of the war. It’s fiction, but I got more insight from this book than from many of the nonfiction books I’ve read this year. It’s seriously so, so good.

Epictetus: The Complete Works by Robin Waterfield
I’d been meaning to read this book for a while, and I’m so happy I finally dove in. This newer translation of Enchiridion and Discourses—two works I’ve been obsessed with since first reading them nine years ago—feels like a fresh conversation with an old friend. Epictetus himself never wrote anything down; everything we have comes from the careful notes of one devoted student.

One of my biggest takeaways: A person might be physically stronger than you. Five people could tackle and restrain you. A person may be smarter, healthier, more beautiful than you. But none of that makes them superior to you. The only thing that can make a person superior is their use of superior reasoning. If you wish to truly improve yourself, Epictetus insisted, improve your reasoning.

Also, he will make you laugh:

“‘So am I the only one who’s going to be decapitated today?’ What are you saying? Would you want everyone to have their heads cut off? Would that make you feel better?”

“Don’t complain. Don’t say, ‘Everyone hates me!’ Who wouldn’t hate someone who carries on like that?”

Oh, Epictetus. Always a pleasure.

Courage Under Fire by James Bond Stockdale
I bought this book (it’s more like a pamphlet—only about 21 pages) on vacation last year at The Painted Porch Bookshop. I’m not sure why I pulled it off the shelf this month, but it turned out to pair perfectly with Epictetus: The Complete Works, as Stockdale used Epictetus’s teachings to get through seven and a half years as a POW in Vietnam.

Socrates by Paul Johnson
Before Socrates, philosophy belonged to society’s elite—an abstract pursuit reserved for those with leisure and education. Socrates changed that. He brought philosophy down to earth, turning it into something practical, something any person could use in daily life. What is good and what is bad? What’s worth chasing and what’s worth avoiding? How should we define justice? At its heart: What makes a good life? Socrates laid the groundwork on which Stoicism would later be built. It’s no wonder he was Epictetus’s hero.

Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday
I reread this book—well, technically I listened to the audiobook for the first time—on a whim while driving to the Grand Canyon. It’s amazing how much I’d missed the first time through. If you haven’t read Discipline Is Destiny, you’re truly missing out. Also, the afterword is one of the best reflections on the writing process I’ve ever read.

Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
Oh my gosh, this book is absolutely brilliant—and haunting. It’s the ultimate example of “words as weapons.” It’s short, too—you can probably read it in under an hour. By the end you’ll be smiling and thinking holy shit at the protagonist’s brilliance.

Reading Etty Hillesum in Context edited by Klaas A.D. Smelik, Gerrit Van Oord, Jurjen Wiersma
As I may have mentioned, I LOVE Etty Hillesum. After reading An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork by Etty Hillesum, Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed by Patrick Woodhouse, Enduring Lives: Living Portraits of Women and Faith in Action by Carol Lee Flinders (the section on Etty), and The Jungian Inspired Holocaust Writings of Etty Hillesum: To Write Is to Act by Barbara Morrill, I had to read this textbook that Morrill recommended. If you want a deeper understanding of who Etty was and the world in which she wrote her diary, this is the book to pick up.

This might be what’s holding you back

Life, Philosophy / /

Lately, I’ve been immersed in the diaries of Etty Hillesum.

What unfolds on those pages is one of the most radical shifts in perspective I’ve ever seen. You watch her go from restless and frustrated to calm, confident, and courageous—in the span of just a few years, and under the shadow of the Nazi regime that would eventually claim her life.

“I really must become simpler,” she writes. “We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.”

What struck me most, as I read, was how much she sounded like a Stoic—specifically, Marcus Aurelius. And yet, there’s no evidence she ever studied Stoicism. One of the many parallels I found was this reminder they both wrote to themselves: Uncomplicate yourself. Be free of calculation and pretension.

Then I thought: no calculations. Have no calculations.

I’ve been repeating this to myself for the past month, and it’s been freeing. Not that I think of myself as “calculated” in the usual sense, but I can be calculated with myself. Sometimes I do things that are irrational, either out of superstition or as a way to relieve anxiety and feel in control. I’ll go back and forth in my mind, debating what something means or doesn’t mean, what will happen or won’t.

But now, when those thoughts creep in, I remind myself: no calculations. And I move on.

Isn’t it wild how much power our thoughts have over our life? If you think your life is crappy…it’s only because you think your life is crappy! Our stories are reality.

The other day, Courtney went to the dentist and told me how uncomfortable she felt for the first fifteen minutes. While the dentist was poking and scraping, Courtney was saying to herself, “It will be over in twenty minutes, and then you can feel relief.”

But then she thought: or I can just feel relief now.

She repeated it—I can feel relief now—and little by little, she relaxed.

That shift—changing the story we tell ourselves—reminds me of something Billy Oppenheimer recently shared:

After finishing college, Ezra Koenig took a job teaching middle school in Brooklyn. Outside school hours, he poured his energy into Vampire Weekend, the band he started with friends from college, where he served as the lead singer and guitarist.

“At that phase of my life,” Koenig said, “I was pretty unhappy. I enjoyed parts of being a teacher, but I stressed constantly, thinking, ‘Oh, I didn’t choose this. This isn’t my dream or passion. The band has to take off. My dream has to materialize.’ Everything felt very high-stakes.”

He found himself constantly preoccupied with what would make him truly happy.

“I really wish I could go back and tell myself, ‘Being a teacher would be fine too.’ I wish I could relieve some of that stress and say to myself, ‘Being a teacher is important too. If the band makes one album and you come back to teaching, that can be a really rewarding life as well.’”

Vampire Weekend did go on to become a huge success, and Ezra is genuinely grateful for where he ended up. But looking back, he sees how unnecessary all that pressure was. He could have found happiness on either path—whether as a musician or as a teacher who plays music on the side.

“There’s the belief that happiness only comes from achieving your dreams. The concept of dream achievement is such a double-edged sword. Because the paradox is that most people’s dream, including mine, is really just to be happy. When you strip away all the specifics, the dream is to be happy.

I’ve now met so many people in my life. I’ve met people who are infinitely more successful than me, who are some of the most stressed-out, miserable people you can imagine. And I’ve also met people who’ve watched opportunities come and go but are deeply happy.”

He learned that the state of his mind shapes the state of his life.

“I think that’s why I now have that impulse to go back and tell myself, Vampire Weekend or teacher in Brooklyn—on both paths, it’s about your attitude.”

It’s about the story you tell yourself.

“Obviously, both could be rewarding because you see that being a musician and a teacher are both incredibly fulfilling jobs for many people.”

Whether it’s getting a handle on OCD, or feeling okay at the dentist, or finding satisfaction right now, in this moment…the thing holding you back might be the story you’re telling yourself.

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