Reading

What we don’t know

A man arrives at work one day and instead of walking through the main entrance, he goes around back. As another person enters through the back door, the man rushes to catch it before it can close and lock. Once inside, his coworker says to him, “The boss wants to see you.” Without looking up, the man mutters a barely audible, “Yeah, I want to see him too.” In the locker room, he sets down his gym bag—a bag far too large for just clothing—and pulls out a pistol and a handgun. He conceals both under his coat. Then, he goes to look for his boss.

Based on what you know so far, context would assist you if you had to predict what this man would do next. But, as Gavin de Becker points out in The Gift of Fear, (a super fun and engaging read, by the way!) just one small piece of information changes the context of this story: the man is a police officer. Your prediction would likely be different if he was a postal worker. 

The greatest enemy of perception—and therefore, accurate predictions—he says, is judgment. 

And it’s so easy to judge what we think we know. But a theme that keeps coming up in my reading is that we don’t know much of, well, anything.

What if we were more honest with ourselves and others about what we don’t know? If wisdom begins in humility, then it’s more than okay that we don’t know. In fact, it’s the best place to start…

Compassionate Assumption
People can frustrate us. And sometimes when they do, we make harmful judgments about them (the worst of those judgments being that they did something to us). My daughter is purposely trying to make my life miserable. The guy who cut me off is a jerk. My spouse is incapable of understanding why I’m upset. But what if, as Ryan Holiday said in last week’s Daily Stoic email, we fought to defend their side instead of attack it? What if, instead of working to produce evidence against someone, we worked to produce evidence for them? We could follow Seneca’s advice and play the role of public defender, and “plead the case of the absent defendant despite our own interests.” Maybe my daughter is acting out as a way of asking for help. Maybe that guy is having a bad day. Maybe I’m not communicating with enough love toward my spouse. Because we don’t ever really know what someone is going through, do we? Even the people closest to us struggle with things we’ll never know about, let alone comprehend. In any case, we can default to compassionate assumption. If nothing else, it will make us calmer and happier.

What If Five Senses Aren’t Enough?
The sixteenth-century writer and philosopher Montaigne was famous for his skepticism of knowledge. He worked for the court of inquiry and, when a civil case was too complex for a quick verdict by the judge, was tasked with summarizing the evidence for both sides, without passing judgment. Dubbed the king of uncertainty, he knew all evidence was error-prone, and therefore so were decisions based on it. Judges and lawyers were fallible too, and to be doubted. Even the laws themselves were to be questioned because they were made by humans. Perhaps it was this court work that made him skeptical of things, himself included. He vigorously investigated the nuanced, opposing impulses of his soul, but he never took himself too seriously. (He would laugh at his own contradictions and silliness.) Much of his writings end with phrases such as “though I don’t know,” which, Sarah Bakewell writes in How To Live, is pure Montaigne. Basically, he believed that all knowledge should be doubted because it resides in human beings. “We have formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five senses,” he said, “but perhaps we needed the agreement of eight or ten senses, and their contribution, to perceive it certainly and in its essence.” 

Doubt As a Case For Faith
The philosopher Descartes said, “Everything I perceive clearly and distinctly cannot fail to be true.” But, as Montaigne would have pointed out, we can’t possibly know whether we are capable of seeing things clearly, let alone be sure that we do. I think about this a lot when it comes to religious faith. In David Brook’s wonderful book The Second Mountain, he points out that even the most religious people have regular doubts about their faith. Mother Theresa did. Brooks says he still does. But, he argues, faith is strengthened, not destroyed, by doubts. Montaigne likely would have agreed, as Sarah Bakewell writes that he “denied that humans could attain knowledge of religious truths except through faith. Montaigne may not have felt a great desire for faith, but he did feel a strong aversion to all human pretension—and the result was the same.”

Books Read This Month

I read The Road to Character by David Brooks and it was amazing. He tells the stories of people like Dorothy Day, George C. Marshall, A. Phillip Randolph, and Augustine, and the ongoing inner battles they fought to live a life of meaning and purpose. Reading their stories helped me to better understand what it means to live life to its fullest. I can’t recommend this book enough. I read and enjoyed Admiral James Stavridis’s To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision. He combines his 30-plus years of experience in the US Navy with 9 crucial moments in the Navy’s history, to help answer this question: How do great decision-makers make their decisions? And because it’s a collection of 9 different stories, the pages flew by. I also read a hidden gem I found in a used bookstore: an old copy of Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, which I loved so much that I bought and read Fahrenheit 451 which was so good that I added it to my list of favorite books. (I’m sad to say it was my first reading of Fahrenheit; I was book-averse when it was assigned in high school.) I was surprised that it touched on so many of my favorite themes: slowing down, being still, dancing in the rain and taking walks and being present and doing things for no reason other than to do them. Just a great book. Finally, I read The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and oh my gosh, I had so much fun reading it; I wrote exclamation marks on nearly every other page. It’s a book about what we don’t know and how we handle what we don’t know. And I found a lot of cool ideas to potentially use in my own writing.

The best books I read in 2022

It’s surprising how much you can read in a year when you read a little bit every day. I read ~50 books this year and I still feel like I could have been more disciplined about it. Good books have changed my life, and reading them helps me be a better person. Below are the best books I read this year. And I recommend you read them as well!

Buddha by Karen Armstrong

This is a wonderful, readable biography of the Buddha. We tend to think of enlightenment as the final destination. (What’s left to accomplish after reaching nirvana?) Maybe the Buddha believed this as well. But when he reached enlightenment, his sense of self disappeared. He saw at once the connectedness of all living things, and realized that “to live morally was to live for others.” It wasn’t enough that he reached nirvana—he had to help others reach it as well. He spent the next 45 years traversing the Ganges plain, spreading his dhamma to any and everyone he came across. His teachings survive today thanks to this “compassionate offensive”.

Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday

No author has inspired or taught me more about life and philosophy than Ryan Holiday. This book on temperance (moderation) is the second in his four-part cardinal virtues series. He tells inspiring stories of people like Queen Elizabeth, Lou Gehrig, and Winston Churchill to illustrate the beauty of temperance, and contrasts it with cautionary stories of people like Alexander the Great and King George IV, who lacked temperance. I guarantee you’ll find something in this book that will enhance your life. Same with all of his books. This is one of my favorites of his, along with Ego is the Enemy, The Obstacle is the Way, and The Daily Stoic.

The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

This book is just amazing. I gifted it to 2 friends and they couldn’t stop raving about it. Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eva Eger recounts the horrors of watching her parents be marched to the gas chamber, how she talked to herself through the unbearable realities of her imprisonment—“If I survive today,” she repeated to herself, “tomorrow I’ll be free.”—and how she ended up thriving in spite of it. Now a world-renowned psychologist, she gives her patients the advice that she learned long ago: the key to happiness and freedom is already within you. Life always gives you a choice. And as long as you have a choice, you’re free.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

The average human lifespan is about four thousand weeks. Because of this “insultingly short” period of time, Burkeman says we have to neglect almost everything to get anything done. Good time management, therefore, is basically knowing what to neglect. Burkeman gives us practical philosophy about the best ways to spend our time, and therefore, our life.

How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy

This is a fun little book on creativity that Amazon recommended. As the title implies, it’s mostly about songwriting, but I found a bunch of useful gems on creativity. Tweedy starts the book with a story of himself at 7 years old, telling people he’s a songwriter. Not that he was going to be one when he grew up, but that he already was one. Never mind he’d never written a song. This idea of becoming who you already are, as opposed to molding yourself into a vision you have, is something I plan on writing more about.

Other great reads this year: 

Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright

Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis

Open by Andre Agassi

How to be Content by Horace

The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness by Sharon Lebell

How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur

That One Should Disdain Hardships by Musonius Rufus

Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy by Sadhguru

Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be by Steven Pressfield

Discourses by Epictetus

How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell

The Art of Happiness by Epicurus

The Perfect Pass by S.C. Gwynne

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro

Wild Problems by Russ Roberts

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford

And my all-time favorite books I read yearly:

The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The top 15 books I read in 2021

Last year I read over 40 books. I skimmed through a few of them this week as I was reorganizing my bookshelf, and decided to make a list of the top 15. 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays

I’ve read this book numerous times–it’s one of the best books ever written. Marcus Aurelius reminds us: You can assemble your life action by action. No one can stop you from that.

The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday

I’ve been reading this book for years now as part of my daily routine. This is hands down the best book on how to live I’ve ever read. I cannot recommend it enough.

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca

Another book I’ve read many times. One of the biggest takeaways is regarding what is truly worth doing in life: following your unique path and doing it in a way that helps others.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Resistance is real. The only way to beat it is to show up every day and give it everything you have.

Perennial Sellers by Ryan Holiday

“You don’t have to be a genius to make genius—you just have to have small moments of brilliance and edit out the boring stuff.”

Deep Work by Cal Newport

A day spent doing shallow activities will leave you feeling miserable, even if they seem harmless or fun.

Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield

Turning pro means doing your work without thought of praise or criticism. You do your work because you have no choice—because it’s in your heart like blood. Also, your unique, authentic self is in a constant struggle with your ego.

The Daily Laws by Robert Greene

We cannot be great if we are not our authentic selves.

Meditations, The Annotated Edition by Robin Waterfield

We don’t need more information—we need to go deeper with what we already know to be true.

The Cost of These Dreams by Wright Thompson

Endless ambition is a distraction and waste of life. Enjoy, right now, the life you’re living with the people you love.

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

The importance of working at something daily. You can’t think all your best thoughts in advance. 

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

We exist for a split second.

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

Originality is just a mix of existing material. Nothing is truly original.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Ninety-nine percent of what we do is inessential.

How To Be Free by Epictetus, Translated by A.A. Long

We must always be fine-tuning our divine superpower: our ability to reason.

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