Life

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.

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.

The courage to let people watch you fail

Creativity, Life, Philosophy / /

The courage to let people watch you fail

In the 1850s, before she became a pioneer in education, religion, and women’s rights, Rebecca Mitchell’s life was turned upside down. Her husband died, leaving her with two small children to raise. Under Illinois law, a widow couldn’t inherit her husband’s property—it all went to the government. Everything she owned, right down to the clothes on her back, was no longer hers. If she wanted it back, she’d have to buy it.

Rebecca had dreams of becoming a minister, but women weren’t allowed to… well, do much of anything. Her second marriage ended in separation, and by 1882, with her two sons grown and a sense of opportunity pulling her west, she and her teenage daughter boarded a train for Idaho. When they arrived, the only shelter they could find was a shed—just warm enough to keep them from freezing. And yet, in that tiny shed, Rebecca started a school, eventually squeezing in 40 students.

Determined to expand, she set her sights on a larger building that could serve as both a school and a church. For two years, she worked tirelessly to raise the funds. When the chapel was finally built, it housed the school and the school district she had helped establish.

But Rebecca’s ambitions didn’t stop there. She continued founding schools in neighboring communities, and by 1891—now in her fifties—she turned her attention to the government.

After fighting for and winning women’s suffrage in Idaho, she took an even bolder step: she applied to be chaplain of the Idaho legislature, something no woman had ever done. The men were baffled. They said they had never heard of such a thing.

“Why not do the unheard-of thing?” Rebecca asked.

And that’s the question, Sharon McMahon writes: Why not do the unheard-of thing?

“Humans aren’t so much afraid of failure as they are of having people watch them fail,” McMahon continues. “The shame doesn’t come from not scaling the summit, it’s from the people who judge you for not having succeeded.”

Rebecca knew that judgment well. She had been criticized for her failed marriage, for starting a school, for daring to believe a woman could be a chaplain, and for refusing to retire. When she didn’t get the chaplain position, the judgment only intensified. But she didn’t stop. A year later, in 1897, at the age of 64, she got the job. Letters of congratulations poured in from across the country.

After she died in 1908, The Idaho Republic paid tribute to her legacy, calling her “ever ready to proffer the hand of aid and the voice of sympathy to the needy and distressed.” She had lived a life of self-sacrifice, courage, and unstoppable determination in pursuing justice.

More than a century later, in 2022, Idaho unveiled a bronze statue commemorating women’s suffrage. The Spirit of Idaho Women stands tall, a graceful figure with a hand stretched out. “Behind her,” writes McMahon, “stand twelve sets of shoes, those of the generations of women who came before, each decade of suffragists treading the path to enfranchisement. In her hand, she extends a shoe to the women of the future, inviting them to continue in the work that was begun by those with the courage to let people watch them fail.”

Don’t ask, tell

In the 1980s, Leonard Mlodinow was beginning his career as a physicist at Caltech. He was given the freedom to research whatever he liked. At first, this sounded great—complete freedom. But it soon became clear he had a problem: he didn’t know what to work on. He became increasingly anxious. String theory was popular; should he study that? What about that other theory gaining traction? That would be good to research, right?

Desperate to figure it out, he sought out Nobel Prize winner and fellow physicist Richard Feynman and asked him for guidance. After some probing, Feynman finally said to Mlodinow, “Look, selecting a research problem isn’t like climbing a mountain. You don’t do it just because it is there. If you really believed in string theory, you wouldn’t come here asking me. You’d come here telling me.”

If you let others decide what’s “acceptable,” you’ll never get to the good stuff. And that, Elizabeth Gilbert warns, is the real tragedy. “Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here.”

So go for it. Do the unheard-of thing, the thing that lights you up.

Tell people what you’re going to do—and have the courage to let them watch you fail.

Pause, tighten, start, relax

Creativity, Life, Philosophy / /

Wind the clock

Developing an experienced fighter pilot can take ten years and cost $50 million. Pilots must make life-or-death decisions with incomplete information and limited time—all while traveling faster than the speed of sound.

Veteran U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Hasard Lee says their most important training focuses on decision-making. In The Art of Clear Thinking, he says, “Though we have talented pilots, the mantra that we bet our lives on is that a good pilot uses superior judgment to avoid situations that require the use of superior skill.”

Tucked into the right-hand corner of the cockpit in each F-16 fighter jet is a relic from the past: an analog clock. While almost every other part of the jet has been upgraded since the 1970s, the wind-up clock remains. But it’s not used to tell time. It’s used to slow it down.

Seasoned instructors will tell the pilot, “Before you make a decision, wind the clock.” Although it doesn’t seem like much, it allows a pilot to pause and focus, preventing them from rushing into action.

“Winding the clock occupied the pilot’s attention for just a few seconds and physically prevented them from touching anything else,” Lee writes. “It forced their brain to spend time assessing the situation before they acted, allowing them to make far better decisions.”

Tighten the window

Louise DeSalvo says there’s an inverse correlation between the amount of time she has and the amount of writing she gets done. Too much time, and she becomes unfocused or needlessly worried over each word. “I wrote more, and published more books, when my kids were small and when I was teaching more classes than I do now,” she writes. “And the hardest writing times for me were always summers and sabbaticals.”

Like the old saying—if you want something done, give it to a busy person—she prefers to write on days she has a lot to do. It tightens her window of time, sharpening her focus.

“Knowing that I must write during my allotted time or I won’t get to write at all urges me to get right to work, draft a few pages. If all I have to do is write, writing becomes too fraught for me.”

Start the clock

Ryan Holiday has a phrase he often uses with his team: “Start the clock.” If a vendor says something will take six weeks, he wants to start the clock immediately. He doesn’t want to add days or weeks by being slow to respond or indecisive. We can’t control how fast others move, but we can control how quickly we get the ball rolling.

“The project will take six months? Start the clock,” he writes. “You’re going to need a reply from someone else? Start the clock (send the email). Getting the two quotes from vendors will take a while? Start the clock (request it). It’s going to take 40 years for your retirement accounts to compound with enough interest to retire? Start the clock (by making the deposits). It’s going to take 10,000 hours to master something? Start the clock (by doing the work and the study).”

Let it be enough

While it’s important to know how to get the right things done, it’s more important to know your limits.

We’ll never feel like we’ve “finished.” We’ll never feel like we’ve done enough. And guess what? That’s a great thing—it’s how it’s supposed to be.

On a trip to Portugal, professor and author Kate Bowler visited the Batalha Monastery. Inside a giant octagonal chapel, an older man said it was perfect—the layers of beautiful, imperfect ornamentation.

“He gestured up,” Kate writes, “and where the ceiling should have been, there was only open sky. Seven kings had overseen the rise of this monument and had buried their dynasty in its walls. Yet none lived to finish it.”

“It was never finished, dear,” the old man smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you see? It’s us! I can’t imagine a more perfect expression of this life. I came all the way to see it. We’re never done, dear. Even when we’re done, we’re never done.”

Kate reflects:

“All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough and are done before we’ve even started. It’s better this way.”

This or that?

Creativity, Life / /

The hit or the serenity?

In Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Years, Anne Lamott writes about a time she was fixated on a married man—someone she adored and who adored her back. She confessed to a friend, a recovering addict and alcoholic, that she was constantly tempted to call him. Every time they spoke, she wanted to shower him with affection, caught up in the rush of how “luscious and powerful” he was. Her friend listened and kindly replied, “Yeah, yeah, I get it, I’ve done it. But I think each step of the way you gotta ask yourself, Do I want the hit or do I want the serenity?”

“It seemed one of the most profound things I’d ever heard,” Anne reflects. It’s a question that has helped her hundreds of times since—whether with food, men, or anything else that threatens to hijack her peace.

Laundry or writing?

When Louise DeSalvo started writing, she was working full-time, raising two toddlers, caring for her elderly parents, and running a household. Still, she aimed to write two hours a day when she could. If she couldn’t, she would at least write something. “I tried to write every day, no matter what,” she said. “I wrote when my children were napping, or later, when they attended school. Many parents squander that precious time on household tasks. Instead, I did laundry, shopped, and cooked when my children were around.”

Choosing to do one thing means choosing not to do something else. If you want time to write, you have to give something up. “All too often, aspiring writers choose to give up writing. My mentor said it’s important to say, ‘I’m choosing to do the laundry instead of writing,’ instead of saying, ‘I don’t have time to write.’”

Try saying it throughout the day: I’m choosing to read the news instead of a book. I’m choosing to reply to emails instead of starting the project. I’m choosing to look at beautiful houses on Zillow instead of cleaning my own. And on and on.

Special or happy?

A highly respected financier in her mid-fifties—once a star on Wall Street—began to worry her skills were slipping. She wasn’t as sharp as she used to be, and younger colleagues were questioning her judgment. Panicked, she reached out to social scientist Arthur Brooks.

As they spoke, Brooks learned she was deeply unhappy. She “lived to work” and was constantly exhausted. Her marriage was falling apart, and her relationships with her adult children were strained. Now, she feared she was losing her edge in the one thing she had left: her career.

To Brooks, the answer seemed obvious. Why hadn’t she taken time to revive her marriage, reconnect with her kids, or cut back on work? “I knew that her grueling work effort had made her successful in the first place,” he said, “but when you figure out something has secondary consequences that are making you miserable, you find a way to fix it, right? You might love bread, but if you become gluten intolerant, you stop eating it because it makes you sick.” Why hadn’t she been working on the obvious problems?

She thought about it for a moment, then looked at him and said flatly, “Maybe I would prefer to be special rather than happy.”

Brooks was stunned. Her answer lingered in his mind. It reminded him of something. But what? Then it hit him.

Her reasoning—that she preferred being special over being happy—was not unlike the response given by a recovering drug addict when asked why he had continued to get high even though he was fully aware it was making him miserable. “I cared more about being high than being happy,” the addict had said.

The financier, Brooks realized, was an addict, too. A work addict. She cared more about being special than happy. She was choosing her ego over herself, the hit over serenity.

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