Change

The only constant in life is change.

Unknown

Type type type type type delete

Type type type delete

Type type delete

Ctrl + A delete

[baby starts crying]

Guess I’ll try again later.

II.

24 Hours Later…

In his essay, Circles, Emerson writes:

Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.

Evoe! Epiphanic Emerson; how he has a way of explaining things.

Let’s discuss.

Today, I am full of thought. Yesterday, not so much. In this very moment, I feel the full force of productivity and am writing about what it’s like to exist at the tippy top of this wave of creative energy. In this moment, the burst feels limitless—as if it will continue onwards for days to come and I will bless my dearest readers (and myself) with abundant brilliant ideas into infinity and beyond and thus make up for the past several weeks of silence and stalled momentum. I feel the Universal Source Of All Creativity flowing into my third eye, through my veins, and out my fingertips. Hurrah!

Alas, this feeling won’t last. For the human experience is a continuous oscillation between highs and lows, productivity and repose. Today’s mood is entirely inconsistent with yesterday’s procrastination. And tomorrow will come with a mood entirely of its own.

Our feelings and activities change day to day, and with them, our sense of self. Today, in this very moment, I feel God power—planting my thoughts with intention and care; yesterday, I felt the nothingness of a weed—clawing for ideas in the scrap of soil between sidewalk pavers.

Luckily for me, the baby cooperated both days.

III.

Realization

Growing up, I never imagined myself being a stay-at-home mom. My own mom loved her job—so much so that she put off retirement, until, well, Lord only knows if she will ever retire. But when the time came and I decided to stay home to raise my baby, I never realized just how much time and attention and emotional energy that choice would cost me. I used to think stay-at-home moms were unambitious, idle, privileged.

Boy, was I stupid.

And I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to all stay-at-home moms. And all parents. And all caretakers in general. Nurturing a baby is not easy and it is not idle.

This realization has served as a stark reminder that we (mostly me) should never judge other people for their choices. We have no idea what it’s like to be in another’s shoes. Little did I know that baby Hana would refuse to nap for longer than 10 minutes unless she was in my arms. But little did I know that my capacity for love would grow exponentially during each of those arm-bed naps.

Alas, this won’t last.

Thought or no thought, 5 Big Ideas or no big ideas, this is a rare and fleeting chapter in my life. Just four months ago, I gave birth to a beautiful and curious new being. And just four months ago, that little human was half the size that she is today. Each day brings with it new changes and new challenges. And each day I’m reminded that the efforts of the day prior were 100% worth it.

The sacrifices are 100% worth it.

Will nap next to a passing train, as long as I’m in mum’s arms

IV.

Wants & Needs

I want to be in control of my situation, my child, my life.

I want the bestselling book, the securely attached child, the perfect family, the happy homestead.

I want longer days, more hours, ample time.

I want a clear mind, clear direction, undivided attention.

I want it all.

Now.

But I don’t need it all now.

What I need is to be adaptable and attuned to my situation, my child, my life.

What I need is to work on the book proposal, to be present for my family, and to save for the future.

What I need is to be grateful for the time I have.

What I need is to trust that I’m on the right path.

What I need is to make the most of what I’ve got.

V.

Change(d)

Another thing I never imagined myself doing was writing a newsletter. But I did have a dream to write a book or two. The only problem was: I had no experience and no audience.

The newsletter that turned me on to writing newsletters was Charles Eisenstein’s. I saw that he used a platform called “Substack” to publish his essays, so that’s where I went. I spent the first couple months on Substack in stealth mode—testing out the tools of the trade.

From the very beginning, I knew that writing a newsletter was only a stepping stone to becoming the career writer I wanted to be. I had two goals when I first launched 5 Big Ideas: (1) find readers who appreciate my voice and message, and (2) hone my voice and message.

But the more time I spent on Substack, the more my attention shifted towards the “feed” and away from publishing articles. (Wait… this is a social media platform and not just a place to write newsletters?) And because Substack’s business model was to convert newsletter subscribers into paid subscribers, the “feed” prioritized advice and strategies for monetizing newsletters.1 While my initial aim on Substack was to perfect my craft and prepare myself for book writing, it took a turn towards performance metrics and comparing myself to other creators.

While I was able to make some income from my writing (thank you guys—you know who you are), I worry that my work cheapened when I turned on the “paid subscription” option. I abandoned the work that called to me in favor of content I assumed would attract more visibility. I started writing about politics instead of Providence.

When I first began writing here, I had no intention of “going paid.” In fact, I initially believed it might do more harm to my initial goals than benefit. And while I do want to offer the option for generous readers to support me and my work, I’ve always disliked the idea of a “subscription model” for a newsletter. While I personally make an effort to support the creative endeavors of others, I have no interest in being stuck with another recurring charge on my credit card—so why would I ask that of anyone else?

Much has changed in nearly two years since I launched 5 Big Ideas. But what hasn’t changed are my goals. Though I can’t publish as frequently as before, I will continue sharing sporadic newsletters while working on my book proposal. While I’m incredibly grateful to Substack for helping me reach readers—and for showing me that I can get paid for my writing—I’m considering moving this newsletter to a different publishing platform. Since I’ve accepted recurring subscriptions from readers, that means I must also do the right thing and refund those who’ve paid me in anticipation of a regular newsletter.

Thank you for reading 5 Big Ideas and for supporting my work. I hope you’ll stick around to see what comes next.

5 ideas from others + some final thoughts from me

I.

No-Man’s-Land

So we now find ourselves pitted against one another, with each side determined to inflict as much pain as possible on the other, inexpiably. This thought is unbearable to me, and it poisons my days.

And yet you and I, who are so alike, who share the same culture and the same hopes, who have been brothers for so long, joined in the love we both feel for our country, know that we are not enemies. We know that we could live happily together on this land, which is our land—because it is ours, and because I can no more imagine it without you and your brothers than you can separate it from me and my kind…

But I know from experience that to say these things today is to venture into a no-man’s-land between hostile armies. It is to preach the folly of war as bullets fly. Bloodshed may sometimes lead to progress, but more often it brings only greater barbarity and misery. He who pours his heart into such a plea can expect only laughter and the din of the battlefield in reply. And yet someone must say these things, and since you propose to try, I cannot let you take such an insane and necessary step without standing with you in fraternal solidarity.

Of course, the crucial thing is to leave room for whatever dialogue may still be possible, no matter how limited. It is to defuse tensions, no matter how tenuous and fleeting the respite may be. To that end, each of us must preach peace to his own side.

Albert Camus, “Letter to an Algerian Militant,” Algerian Chronicles (1955)1

II.

Divine Love

“Yes—love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason, but the love which I—while dying—first experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man.

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)2

III.

Intellectual Suicide

We were constantly told by our friends that to stand aside from the war mood of the country was to surrender all possibility of future influence, that we were committing intellectual suicide, and would never again be trusted as responsible people or judicious advisers. Who were we to differ with able statesmen, with men of sensitive conscience who also absolutely abhorred war, but were convinced that this war for the preservation of democracy would make all future wars impossible, that the priceless values of civilization which were at stake could at this moment be saved only by war? But these very dogmatic statements spurred one to alarm. Was not war in the interest of democracy for the salvation of civilization a contradiction of terms, whoever said it or however often it was repeated?

Jane Addams, Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922)

IV.

Innocent and Ignorant

In the press, which is owned by rich men, the interests of the investing minority are always identified (doubtless in perfectly good faith) with those of the nation as a whole. Constantly repeated statements come to be accepted as truths. Innocent and ignorant, most newspaper readers are convinced that the private interests of the rich are really public interests and become indignant whenever these interests are menaced by a foreign power, intervening on behalf of its investing minority. The interests at stake are the interests of the few; but the public opinion which demands the protection of these interests is often a genuine expression of mass emotion. The many really feel and believe that the dividends of the few are worth fighting for.

Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means (1937)

V.

Another Bogus Science

In short, Militarism must be classed as one of the most inconsiderately foolish of the bogus “sciences” which the last half century has produced in such profusion, and which have the common characteristic of revolting all sane souls, and being stared out of countenance by the broad facts of human experience. The only rule of thumb that can be hazarded on the strength of actual practice is that wars to maintain or upset the Balance of Power between States, called by inaccurate people Balance of Power wars, and by accurate people Jealousy of Power wars, never establish the desired peaceful and secure equilibrium. They may exercise pugnacity, gratify spite, assuage a wound to national pride, or enhance or dim a military reputation; but that is all. And the reason is, that there is only one way in which one nation can really disable another, and that is a way which no civilized nation dare even discuss.

George Bernard Shaw, “Common Sense About the War,” The New Statesman (1914)

+I.

Not So Simple

This week’s issue of 5 Big Ideas began with one simple desire: to express my revulsion towards war.

But what seemed like an easy and straightforward task quickly turned into a case of analysis paralysis.

What would happen if I ventured into this no-man’s-land? Would I be committing intellectual suicide? What would my readers think? What do my readers think? They must think warfare is the least desirable option too, right? But are they willing to admit it? Would they still respect me if I admitted it? How should I go about admitting it?

… How did other writers do it?

The thing about putting one’s convictions into writing is that those thoughts and feelings take on a sort of permanence they wouldn’t have otherwise in casual conversation. In conversation, if the person you’re conversing with disagrees with what you’ve said, you can always retort with, “What I meant to say was …”

But that’s not so easy with writing.

With writing, you must be crystal clear about what you “meant to say.” But even when you write as clearly as humanly possible, the interpretation of your intent belongs to the reader. So, to avoid future regret (and losing readers), the best option is to say nothing at all. If that’s not possible because you feel so strongly about something and must get it out one way or another, the next best option is to tiptoe around the touchy topic. So, instead of saying, “I vehemently condemn the atrocities taking place in Gaza,” or “I don’t think we should be bombing Iran,” one could say, “bloodshed may sometimes lead to progress, but more often it brings only greater barbarity and misery”—and hope your reader can read between the lines.

+II.

Waging War & Wielding Weapons

I recently watched Dr. Strangelove— Stanley Kubrick’s satirical critique of the Cold War in which an unhinged American general decides to nuke the ‘Commies,’ thereby triggering Mutually Assured Destruction. The film’s main takeaway is that when power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual, the capacity for cataclysmic self-destruction is exacerbated exponentially. All humans are susceptible to irrationality, misjudgment, paranoia, personal neuroses, and a fundamental inability to fully grasp the broader consequences of their actions. That includes Putin, Trump, and Netanyahu—all of whom possess authority over nuclear weapons.

But perhaps it’s not foreign missiles or adversaries that will be humanity’s undoing. Perhaps our greatest threat lies in our own inability to control the power we wield.

I.

Delirious Phenomena

The word doubt comes from the Proto-Indo-European root duo, meaning “two.” To face doubt is to be of “two minds” or “to choose between two things.”

As artists, or creatives, or better yet—humans—we are constantly facing doubt. We are constantly dealing with two minds and having to choose between two things. First, there’s the human mind, which thinks everything it does is shit. And then there’s the inspired mind, which is enchanted by the “inner spirit”—that is, inspiration.

I’m currently facing doubt as I write these words, just as I’ve faced doubt with all the other words I’ve ever written. But living a creative life is a choice. It’s choosing the inspired mind over the human mind. It’s choosing to spawn inspiration through action and effort and creation. It’s choosing to detach one’s ego from the outcome and let the creative spirit flow through. It’s choosing to create new things, new art, new life, new stuff—regardless of form. It’s choosing to be the surrogate through which art is born.

It’s knowing that your art comes through you, but it is not made of you.

And it’s accepting your role in the process of creation.

II.

Pure Spirit

Contrary to what was later believed, Greek sculpture did not idealise an abstract body, but rather sought for an ideal Beauty through a synthesis of living bodies, which was the vehicle for the expression of a psychophysical Beauty that harmonised body and soul, in other words the Beauty of forms and the goodness of the soul: this was the ideal underpinning Kalokagathia, the noblest expressions of which are the poems of Sappho and the sculptures of Praxiteles.

This Beauty finds its finest expression in static forms, in which a fragment of action or movement finds equilibrium and repose, and for which simplicity of expression is more suitable than a wealth of detail.

Umberto Eco, History of Beauty (2004) (emphasis my own)

The process of creation is a constant battle between the two minds—the human mind and the inspired mind. As a result, the human mind tries to overthink the vision of the inspired mind and makes a mess of things. The process of creating something beautiful, something pure, requires removing all the excess stuff that the human mind attempts to “contribute.” The highest expression of art is pure inspiration—pure spirit.

Bringing pure spirit into the material world requires listening and doing, not thinking.

III.

Patchwork

Probably the most unusual thing was, John said to him, “What are you going to call it then, is it called ‘Mama?’” And Freddie went, “No, I think we’ll call it ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’” And there was a little silence, everybody thought, “Okaaay…” I don’t think anybody said, “Why?” but there it was. How strange to call a song “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but it just suits it down to the ground and it became a milestone. But nobody knew.

Brian May (lead guitarist and backing vocalist for Queen), Rolling Stone interview (2015)

Bohemian: Referring to the community of nomadic artists who settled in what is now Bohemia (Czech Republic).

Rhapsody: Rhaptein (“to stitch, sew, weave”) + ōidē (“song”). Literally, “one who stitches or strings songs together.”

Bohemian Rhapsody: patchwork art

Inspiration doesn’t just reside in the ether; it exists in the art of other artists. When we encounter pure art and beauty out in the wild, we say it “speaks” to us or it “moves” us. That’s the inner spirit.

The more we immerse ourselves in the art and beauty crafted by others, the more inspired we become. And when we’re ready to create art of our own, we can channel the inspiration that spoke to us through that ornate cathedral, that epicurean fare, that ingenious device. We draw a little inspiration from here, a little inspiration from there, and with the help of our own creative Muse, we weave together a masterpiece of our own.

IV.

The Randomist Bits

The more I use AI tools and ponder the phenomenon that underpins them, the more I liken it to Aggregated Information rather than Artificial Intelligence.

Like the patchwork art that is a bohemian rhapsody, AI outputs are a patchwork of digitized information from various sources on the interwebs. Take this AI response for example:

When prompted, “what inspired Freddie Mercury to write Bohemian Rhapsody?,” Perplexity AI provided 9 sources it used to produce the output. AI art also aggregates digitized information. For example, when prompted to blend three famous paintings together, Grok AI produced the following:

The amount of data these AI models are trained on is insane. (Aggregated Insanity, anyone?) They have way more information available to them than the smartest human in the world. And they can outproduce and outperform most lawyers, doctors, software engineers, younameit. And they can develop characters and videos that the best animators in the world couldn’t dream up. If you haven’t already, check out some of the content coming from Google’s Veo 3—it’s mindblowing.

Many creators, myself included, are now using Aggregated Insanity as a tool to create their own art. After all, no one wants to get left behind in the Digital Age. But it’s tough to say whether AI actually makes the creator more creative or their art more artistic. While Salvador Dali’s creative process included “irrational understanding and delirious phenomena,” and Vincent Van Gogh admitted himself into an insane asylum to produce “The Starry Night,” all I had to do to create “Mona Lisa’s Great Wave on a Starry Night” was type a prompt into a smartphone app.

As incredible as AI is, there’s something about the stuff it produces that’s characteristically unremarkable. While the most recognizable paintings in the world include Mona Lisa, Starry Night, and The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, the most recognizable AI art in the world includes reinterpretations of famous paintings like Mona Lisa, Starry Night, and The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. In other words, there are no AI-generated magna opera.

Why is this?

When humans create patchwork art, they weave together the best bits—the most inspiring stuff—to create something new. But when machines create patchwork art, they weave together the randomist bits—the stuff they think you’ll want to see—to create something new. The AI doesn’t have a Muse or “inner spirit” to enchant it with inspiration. It’s a product of the human mind and creates stuff to please the human mind. It overthinks the vision and makes a mess of things. Even if that mess looks pretty cool sometimes. But Pretty Cool AI Stuff doesn’t speak to us or move us like pure art and beauty do. “Mona Lisa’s Great Wave on a Starry Night” piqued your interest for a second, but then you moved on. People don’t just glance at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and move on… The inspiration behind AI-generated content shares the same “inner spirit” behind most of the stuff posted on the internet—it’s made to grab our attention, not to hold it.

Today, AI models are primarily trained on data that humans have created and uploaded to the World Wide Web since its inception in 1989. But to win the AI race, these models need more ᴍᴏʀᴇ MORE data. Models scrape the web daily for new information—including unauthorized or copyright material—but still fall short of their AGI goals. And as new information on the web is increasingly influenced by, or created entirely by, AI, next-generation models will be training on more and more synthetic data. Not only will this trend further obscure reality online, but it will also result in deteriorated outputs.

In this foundational paper on the topic, researchers at Stanford and Rice universities found that AI outputs progressively decrease in quality or diversity the more they rely on synthetic data. As successive models are trained on more and more synthetic data, the AI appears to fall into an autophagous (“self-consuming”) loop. The researchers called this condition Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD), making analogy to mad cow disease.

To test the AI MAD Disease myself, I asked Midjourney AI to “blend” two slightly different versions of the AI-generated “Mona Lisa’s Great Wave on a Starry Night.”

Instead of creating something better, crisper, superior, it produced something blander, blurrier, inferior:

I did this several times over, blending each new generation of synthetic images for each subsequent iteration…

Until this happened…

The AI didn’t just go MAD; it broke.

V.

Knowledge

Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing. For example, the being of a child is transformed by growth and education into that of a man; among the results of this transformation is a revolutionary change in the way of knowing and the amount and character of the things known. As the individual grows up, his knowledge becomes more conceptual and systematic in form, and its factual, utilitarian content is enormously increased. But these gains are offset by a certain deterioration in the quality of immediate apprehension, a blunting and a loss of intuitive power. Or consider the change in his being which the scientist is able to induce mechanically by means of his instruments. Equipped with a spectroscope and a sixty-inch reflector an astronomer becomes, so far as eyesight is concerned, a superhuman creature; and, as we should naturally expect, the knowledge possessed by this superhuman creature is very different, both in quantity and quality, from that which can be acquired by a star-gazer with unmodified, merely human eyes.

Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (1945)

While Aldous Huxley foresaw many future dystopian technologies, one technology he did not predict is AI. Today, you can ask a chatbot just about any question you can conjure up and receive an immediate, comprehensive response. Equipped with a smartphone and internet service, an average person becomes, so far as knowledge is concerned, a superhuman creature.

But with that gain in factual, utilitarian content comes a certain deterioration in the quality of intuitive power. Intuition—which literally means the “inner tutor”—is how humans and their hominin ancestors have navigated the world for millions of years. Intuition is what led the Sumerians to etch the earliest form of written communication into clay. Intuition is what led the ancient Greeks to dream of democracy. Intuition is what led Van Gogh, Da Vinci, and Hokusai to create timeless beauty. Intuition is what led to the conception and development of every technology we have available to us today—including AI.

What I believe goes on behind human understanding is a higher guidance—call it inspiration or intuition or inclination, insight, instinct, ingenuity, intellect, etc. It’s something within us, and it’s something greater than us. But what goes on behind AI thinking is a black box. Even the creators of these advanced AI models don’t quite know how they arrive at the conclusions that they do. And the more we give up our inspiration and intuition for Aggregated Insanity, the more we’ll struggle to comprehend the most important things in life.

Love, faith, beauty, hope, meaning, Truth, God—these are unknowable things. They cannot be aggregated or computed; they must be lived.

The Human Condition

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein, in a letter to Otto Juliusburger (1946)

Most people are not okay inside most of the time. And when people are not okay inside, they’ll try to control things on the outside so that they remain okay inside. Essentially, people attempt to create an outer world that will not push their inner buttons. They’ll work tirelessly to control their surroundings, their schedules, even other people. This kind of thinking is predictable, but preposterously unproductive. Here’s why:

The main reason why you’re not okay inside is because you’ve suppressed emotions from difficult past experiences within you. Some of those experiences might’ve taken place when you were young and did not yet have the tools and emotional maturity to handle them when they happened. Some of them took place when you had the ability to deal with them, but you chose not to. The feelings were just too difficult to handle in the moment. So, instead of experiencing your emotions fully and letting them pass through you, you pushed them down—and now they reside within you. That’s what happens when you don’t let shit go.

When past feelings are stored within you, they have the ability to resurface whenever you’re triggered (i.e., whenever the outer world pushes your inner buttons). So, in an attempt to avoid getting triggered, you try to control things outside of you. Perhaps you were mistreated by an old friend—gaslit, sabotaged, gossiped about, betrayed by, younameit—and now whenever you go somewhere or do something that you and your friend did together, it reminds you of them and the way you felt when they hurt you. So now you avoid going to places you once frequented and stop doing the things you guys did together. This is an attempt to control the outer world so that your insides don’t get hurt. You stop going to the Thai place or you quit CrossFit because they “trigger” you. But the only reason you feel uncomfortable at these places is because you’ve suppressed the emotions associated with that old friend. You refused to make peace with those past feelings and let them go.

What I’m trying to get at here is that it’s not the outsides that are making you upset. It’s your insides. More specifically, the emotions you’ve suppressed inside. When you do the inner work to accept and let go of your past, you won’t feel the need to control things on the outside. We all make mistakes, we all hurt people, we all feel hurt, we’re all victims of one thing or another, we all suffer. And we all have the ability to make peace with the emotions that resurface from the past and then let them pass. We can be wholly engaged in the present moment rather than reliving our past traumas over and over and over again.

When you clean up the mess you’ve suppressed, you’ll find that the restaurant and gym are just places, like every other place. You’ll realize that your need to control everything around you stemmed from your desire to avoid feeling old feelings that should’ve passed long ago. And when you let old shit go, you might even be able to run into that former friend again at some point in the future and not instantly feel upset inside. You’ll feel at ease because you have unburdened yourself from those old feelings and now you’re okay inside.

II.

B.S.

In yogic philosophy, these suppressed feelings from past experiences are called samskaras. The ancient Upanishad texts describe samskaras as imprints left on the mind or soul by past actions, thoughts, and experiences. Michael A. Singer expands on this in Living Untethered, describing samskaras as energy blockages in the heart center that disrupt the natural upward flow of vital energy to the higher chakras. He writes:

When you use your will to block an experience from passing through, the flow of energy has to find a way to keep moving. Energy can’t stand still. Energy is power, and when it hits the resistance of your will it is forced to circle around itself. That’s the only way energy can stay in one place. The circle is such a powerful form in creation. It allows something to keep moving yet stay stationary. This is how samskaras are formed.

So, essentially, when you don’t let the energy from a difficult emotion pass through you the moment it first arises, that energy spirals around itself and stays stuck within you until you let it go. I find it interesting that people will say they’re “spiraling” when they get triggered. I also find it interesting that rumination is cyclical, too.

But if I refer to suppressed feelings as “samskaras” or “circular energy,” I’ll probably lose a few readers… myself included. So I’ll just refer to them as B.S.

We’ve all got some B.S. inside us, and it resurfaces every time we encounter something that reminds us of whatever difficult experience happened way back when. It’s because of our B.S. that we try to control everything outside of us in an effort to keep it under control—that is, deep down in our subconscious. The reason why B.S. is even there in the first place is because the emotional energy stemming from our past experience was too much for us to handle. We refused to accept it and let it pass through us, and now we get to experience it over and over and over again.

Now that’s a load of B.S.

III.

Let It Go

So how do we relieve ourselves of our B.S.? Well, it’s simple in theory and difficult in practice. B.S. will resurface on its own whenever we’re triggered—so, pretty much on a daily basis—and when it does, we let it go.

When old emotions resurface and your thoughts begin to spiral, don’t engage. Don’t ruminate on what happened in an attempt to process it or brainstorm all the ways you could’ve avoided it. It’s in the past. There’s no do-overs, no second chances, no rewrites. Instead of dwelling on whatever happened and feeling those old feelings over and over and over again, let them go. Willfully detach yourself from those unproductive, spiraling thoughts. Let the emotions rise then pass. Feel them without judgment, and then move on. Accept your past experiences for what they are and own the mistakes that were made, because the only alternative is to entertain your mind’s futile efforts to rewrite what’s already been written in stone. Take what you’ve learned and bring that with you into the future.

Because, let’s be real: More bad shit will come up in life which will cause you to feel all sorts of new hard feelings. There’s no need to hold onto old ones, too.

IV.

Forgiveness

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.

Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1994)

Most people don’t realize that forgiveness is for the forgiver, not the forgiven. That’s because forgiveness is not about excusing or condoning what happened. It’s about making the conscious choice to relieve yourself of the way those actions made you feel.

When you hold onto resentment, that bitterness lives as B.S. inside you—it’s the emotion from a past experience that you were unable to accept, so you suppress it and allow it to resurface whenever you’re triggered. Hatred, vindictiveness, and resentment only serve to hurt the person who holds these feelings in their heart. Most likely, the person you’re resenting has no idea you’re still hurting. Your emotional pain hurts you, not them.

I recently experienced the paradox of forgiveness firsthand when I phoned an old friend to apologize for holding judgment towards her. Our relationship ended in a slow burn after she sided with another friend over me. After months of no communication, I called her and said, “I just want to let you know that I forgive you and no longer hold any hard feelings toward you. I wish you only good things in life.”

Her reaction made it apparent that she had no clue I had held so much hurt from our fallout. It was also apparent that my grievances were not mutual; she wasn’t holding anything against me. All the spiraling and overthinking I’d put myself through had got me nowhere. It was an utter waste of time and energy. But once I forgave her (and actually meant it), I was set free. The next time I thought about her, and even saw her, there was no pain. Just acceptance.

V.

Vision For The Future

Everyone is looking at the world through their own B.S.—their own blockages, their own suppressed feelings, their own past impressions. It’s only once you begin to release those unresolved feelings when you can start to see clearly.

I’m not trying to downplay the severity of your painful past. Perhaps you were abused or neglected; perhaps you felt unloved, unwanted, or unworthy. Those experiences were very real when they happened and have shaped you into the person you are today. But if you never let go of the emotional weight they left behind, then you will continue to relive them over and over and over again. You will continue to ruminate and spiral. You will continue to live in the past instead of being present in the now. Rather than hurting you once, those difficult experiences will hurt you indefinitely unless you accept them and let them go.

To truly be okay inside, the most important person you must forgive is yourself. Every past is filled with shoulda, coulda, wouldas. But the past is in the past. We cannot go backwards. Rather than replaying errors, dwelling on regrets, and allowing old wounds to dictate your present behavior, try forgiving yourself. You cannot rewrite what has already been written, but, if you’re still alive, your story isn’t over. By forgiving yourself—that is, unburdening yourself of your past feelings—you can turn your life story around. You can be the hero in your own Hero’s Journey.

+I.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that you’re a beautiful being. You’re a being of great love, light, and inspiration. You are made in the image of God. The god who created the whole universe exists inside of you, but you don’t realize that… This is the human predicament, and nothing is going to meaningfully change until you learn to live from a deeper place. To get out of this predicament, you’ve got some work to do, and the work is on yourself. To quote Rumi, the great thirteenth-century Persian poet, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

Michael A. Singer, Living Untethered (2022)

Disposition

The easiest way to be miserable is to have a lousy disposition. It is also the simplest and most direct way to make the people you live with miserable.

Similarly, the easiest way to turn your life into a reasonably happy experience is to cultivate a cheerful, pleasant disposition.

Your disposition is the most important single factor for living enjoyably, regardless of whether you are rich or poor, smiled or frowned upon by fortune.

John A. Schindler, M.D., Woman’s Guide to Better Living (1957)

A few years back, my friend Mike planned two surprise birthday events for his girlfriend, Mary. The first was a morning hike with a small group of close friends, and the second was a dinner by Lake Tahoe with a bigger crowd later in the evening.

Midway through the hike—the day’s first surprise—Mary began to distance herself from the group and was clearly upset. When I approached her and asked what was wrong, she admitted that her birthday didn’t feel special enough. Hiking with friends was something we did often, and she had hoped for something more to mark the occasion.

I reckon it was hard for Mary to say that—especially knowing how much effort Mike had put into organizing the hike and gathering her closest friends. But I understood the disappointment Mary felt. I used to cry on my birthday, too.

I was born on Halloween, and while there are many fun happenings to partake in on October 31st, I never once had a birthday party thrown specifically for me. Halloween was a special day, but it was never my special day. I told Mary this, and I also told her that things finally changed for me when I let go of my unrealistic expectations.

Instead of wishing for the perfect birthday, I decided to focus on having a positive attitude—no matter what the day looked like. It didn’t matter if I was trick-or-treating with family, bar hopping with friends, or dancing in the streets of Oaxaca for Día de los Muertos. It didn’t matter if I did nothing at all. What mattered was that I decided I would have a good day. A good outlook. A good disposition.

The quality of our days—be it our birthday or any other ordinary day—depends entirely on our disposition. A negative disposition can ruin even the most perfect day, while a grateful, positive disposition can turn the worst day around, too.

II.

Call to Adventure

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating.

Richard Bach, Jonathon Livingston Seagull (1970)

Every year, I re-read Jonathon Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. The story is an allegory about a seagull who rejects the conformist life of his flock to discover his calling and realize his full potential. It’s also one of the best-selling books of all time and a super quick and easy read.

Jonathon Livingston Seagull—yes, a seagull—realizes that his true purpose in life is not to squabble over scraps of food, but to reach perfection in flight. He practices flying day in and day out until he reaches the highest heights and soars to top speeds. His call to adventure doesn’t come without sacrifices, however, as Jonathon is ostracized by his flock and must live and fly alone.

If we were to apply the above quote to humanity, it might read something like this:

Most people don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of life—how to “get through” each day. For most people, it’s not the pursuit of excellence that matters, but mere survival.

Eventually, after years of training and dedication to his craft, Jonathon Livingston Seagull achieves an awareness akin to enlightenment. He becomes a seagull guru of sorts and tells his eager students:

“Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea of freedom. And precision flying is a step towards expressing our real nature.”

If we were to apply his lesson toward humanity, it might go something like this:

Each of us is in truth an idea of God, an unlimited idea of freedom. And our call to adventure is a step towards expressing our real nature.

III.

A Different Kind of Suffering

People do not realize just how much they are putting at risk when they don’t accept what life presents them with, the questions and tasks that life sets them. When they resolve to spare themselves the pain and suffering, they owe to their nature. And so doing, they refuse to pay life’s dues and for this very reason, life then often leads them astray. If we don’t accept our own destiny, a different kind of suffering takes its place: a neurosis develops, and I believe that that life which we have to live is not as bad as a neurosis. If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. A neurosis is a much greater curse! In general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat life, to avoid something. One cannot do more and live what one really is. And we are all made up of opposites and conflicting tendencies. After much reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it is better to live what one really is and accept the difficulties that arise as a result—because avoidance is much worse.

Aniela Jaffé, Reflections on the Life and Dreams of C.G. Jung (2023)

IV.

Finding Meaning

This next idea comes from a Pew Research study which surveyed nearly 19,000 adults in 17 advanced economies

What gives life meaning?

Chances are, results vary.

What gives life meaning not only varies from person to person, but also from country to country…

For 14 out of 17 countries, family was the most commonly cited source of meaning. But in Taiwan, society topped the list—ranking higher than family, occupation, and material well-being. A woman in Taiwan explained that “Food, clothing, housing, and transportation are all convenient. Life is safe and tranquil.” A young man added, “Living in Taiwan is very free, freer than China and Hong Kong.”

What gives life meaning also changes throughout life…

When I became a parent, family skyrocketed to the top of my list. But it wasn’t always that way. When I was in my mid-twenties, I used to think more along the lines of a 25-year-old Dutch man who was surveyed saying, “The most important thing for me is work. I think it is very important to build my career, to build my life, so that I’m doing better and better.”

When it comes to what constitutes a meaningful life, there’s no right or wrong answer. What matters is identifying what gives you meaning in the here and now and choosing to center your life around it.

V.

Stop and Realize

We rarely stop to realize that everything we have—be it material, spiritual, or intellectual—exists because of other people. Literally everything—the spark for this Big Idea, the computer I’m typing on, the office I’m working in—is the direct result of someone else’s effort, invention, insight.

We rarely stop to realize that one lonely human left to their own devices in this modern world would present a pitiful spectacle.

Human life as we know it depends on cooperation. We learn how to make useful products and provide useful services so that we can trade for other useful products and services. We depend upon others for our creature comforts because we don’t want to be isolated creatures in a jungle.

Once we stop to realize that it’s other people who bring us our homes, cars, roads, meals, entertainment, electricity, healthcare, ideas, Amazon deliveries, and a million other necessities and luxuries, then we can begin to understand that life without other people would be tragic and bleak. Every leap forward—from 5G to Chat GPT-3, Starships to neural chips, Khan Academy to Virtual Reality—is the direct result of others’ hard work.

Others whom we rarely stop to realize that we need.

+I.

Man Up

Some not-so-poetic musings + the poem that inspired them:

Musings:

Hold steady in the face of chaos, doubt, and criticism.

Trust yourself.

Be patient, honest, humble.

Don’t succumb to bitterness or self-importance.

Acknowledge your thoughts and follow your dreams, but don’t be consumed by them.

Remember that both success and failure are fleeting—don’t let either define you.

After betrayal and loss, gather your strength and rebuild.

If you’re willing to risk everything, be willing to face loss with grace.

Persist through sheer resolve; don’t seek pity or praise.

Value everyone equally.

Maximize every moment through discipline and clarity of purpose.

Poem: “If—”

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

˖

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

˖

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

˖

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Children of the future Age

Reading this indignant page,

Know that in a former time

Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.

William Blake

I.

Life’s Longing

For this first idea, I’d like to share an excerpt from a maternity update I sent to family and friends earlier this year:

I was recently asked if I “felt connected” to the baby growing inside me. My honest answer? “Not really.”

While I feel immense love and motherly protection for baby Hana (as does Hunter), I don’t “feel connected” to her in the sense that I have any control over her. She kicks when she wants to, she rolls when she wants to, she’ll make her grand arrival when she wants to. And when she does, she will be her own person. While her body’s growth and development depend on me at this stage, it’s already apparent that she has a distinct spirit and reason for being that is entirely her own. We can’t wait to meet her and learn the lessons she will soon teach us.

There’s a beautiful passage from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (1923) which captures this sentiment quite nicely:

II.

Their Own Thoughts

I found the following example in Stephen Cope’s The Great Work of Your Life (2014)

When you hear the name Jane Goodall, who do you think of?

Do you think of the chimpanzee lady? The conservationist? The humanitarian?

What about a curious little girl born into a wealthy family and living on a farm in the heart of London?

In her autobiography, Jane Goodall recounts a memory from when she was only four years old:

One of my tasks was to collect the hens’ eggs. As the days passed, I became more and more puzzled. Where on a chicken was there an opening big enough for an egg to come out? Apparently no one explained this properly, so I must have decided to find out for myself. I followed a hen into one of her little wooden henhouses—but of course, as I crawled after her she gave horrified squawks and hurriedly left. My young brain must have then worked out that I would have to be there first. So I crawled into another henhouse and waited, hoping a hen would come in to lay. And there I remained, crouched slightly in one corner, concealed in some straw, waiting.

Four-year-old Jane waited patiently for hours to see a hen lay an egg—something today’s kids might simply search on YouTube. But back at the house, the Goodall family was in a panic... Little Jane was missing!

The story continues:

At last, a hen came in, scratched about in the straw, and settled herself on her makeshift nest just in front of me. I must have kept very still or she would have been disturbed. Presently the hen half stood and I saw a round white object gradually protruding from the feathers between her legs. Suddenly with a plop, the egg landed on the straw. With clucks of pleasure the hen shook her feathers, nudged to the egg with her beak, and left. It is quite extraordinary how clearly I remember that whole sequence of events.

Little Jane Goodall vanished for several hours, sending her family into a desperate search. After witnessing the miracle of a hen laying an egg, she darted out of the henhouse, brimming with excitement to tell someone. When Jane’s mother spotted her, she rushed to her:

…despite her worry, when Vanne [Jane’s mother] saw the excited little girl rushing toward the house, she did not scold me. She noticed my shining eyes and sat down to listen to the story of how a hen lays an egg: the wonder of that moment when the egg finally fell to the ground.

As the daughter of a successful businessman and novelist, one might assume that Jane’s parents wanted their eldest daughter to grow up proper and polished. Perhaps become a professor or marry a nobleman. Instead, Jane was raised by parents who recognized, nurtured, and cherished her love for animals from a young age. While I would’ve been scolded for disappearing, Jane was celebrated for following her adventurous spirit—despite the unintentional stress it brought her family.

That support didn’t stop in childhood. Years later, Vanne would accompany her daughter into the Tanzanian jungle, “keeping hut” as her daughter launched her first field research station among the chimpanzees. And Jane’s father, Mortimer, gifted his baby girl a stuffed toy chimpanzee instead of the typical teddy bear—despite other parents warning that it would give her nightmares. Nearly 90 years later, Jane still has her stuffed chimp, named Jubilee, displayed on a dresser in her room.

III.

Curiosity

I recently came across a maternity update with the caption:

I’m just hopeful to have a little fishing buddy, boy or girl.

At one point in time, my Dad also wanted a “little fishing buddy.” But he ended up with four girls who get seasick and have no interest in baiting hooks or reeling fish out of the water.

It’s common for expectant parents to imagine who their child might become. Some want their little ones to share their passions and pastimes: A writer hopes her child will love books; an engineer pictures a mini tinkerer; a business owner envisions a future CEO in the family. While others set the bar even higher—hoping their kids will become doctors or lawyers or scholars or such.

But are we wanting the wrong things for our kids?

I think so.

What we should really want for our children is for them to be happy. And to be happy, they need to find what interests them. It’s unlikely their interests will align with our own, and we should consider it a blessing when they do. So rather than setting expectations for our little ones, we should strive to be like young Jane’s parents and seek to understand what makes our kids tick. What do they most want to discover about the world? What could they do for hours on end without tiring? What are their God-given gifts and talents?

As Kahlil Gibran writes:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts… you may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

Rather than pushing our dreams and desires onto our children, why don’t we let them show us their dreams and desires? Who knows, one day we may even want to be more like them when we grow up.

IV.

Social Studies

Obviously, a school that makes active children sit at desks studying mostly useless subjects is a bad school.

A.S. Neill, Summerhill (1960)

5 lessons from Summerhill, one of the most unusual schools in the world:

1. Inherent goodness: The greatest gift a child can receive is a life free from fear. The average child isn’t born timid, broken, or disinterested—they learn those behaviors from the adults around them. All children hold the potential to love life and discover their interests.

2. Happiness and wholeness: Education isn’t just about acquiring knowledge—it’s about helping children discover work that excites and fulfills them. A future vocation should engage the heart and soul, not just the intellect.

3. Emotional development: Learning isn’t just intellectual—it’s physical, emotional, and spiritual. Our fixation on academic success, while neglecting emotional intelligence, has left many disconnected from intuition, viewing life only through the filter of thought.

4. Individuality: Because children live in the present and have underdeveloped foresight, their education should reflect their current emotional and mental state and their abilities. Altruism and a sense of duty emerge after childhood—they shouldn’t be expected too early.

5. Mutual Respect: Respect must be mutual. Adults should never use power or force to control children, and children should not use force against adults. Respecting the autonomy of each individual, regardless of age, is foundational to freedom.

V.

Playhood

It is intriguing, yet most difficult, to assess the damage done to children who have not been allowed to play as much as they wanted to. I often wonder if the great masses who watch professional football are trying to live out their arrested play interest by identifying with the players, playing by proxy as it were.

A.S. Neill, Summerhill (1960)

In my last issue of 5 Big Ideas, I explored the importance of doing the inner work (i.e., “fixing yourself”) before bringing children into the world. Beyond the risk of passing on generational trauma or unhealthy patterns, there’s another quieter, but equally damaging consequence of unhealed adults stepping into parenthood: the inability to play.

From the very beginning of life, children need play. Babies need to be tickled and cuddled and smooched—not left alone in a motorized swing with a plastic toy. As they grow, play becomes even more essential to their mental, emotional, and physical development. It’s how they learn, connect, express themselves, and begin to understand the world.

Kids are wildly imaginative and unbound by adult conventions. One child might transform a cardboard box into a spaceship and blast off to Mars; another may fantasize a tale about bunnies bouncing on clouds. When we nurture children’s creativity—by playing alongside them, listening to their stories, and letting them lead—we give them permission to carry that lightheartedness into adulthood. We empower them to invent, envision, and create. Alternatively, when we treat play as a waste of time—crushing our children’s fantasies at home and eliminating unstructured free time at school—we hinder their ability to become free, fun, and forward-thinking adults one day.

When we ignore a child’s playfulness and tell them to “grow up,” we damage their spirit. And when these damaged kids grow up to be adults one day, they may find themselves living vicariously through others who know how to play rather than having fun themselves.

+I.

Baby Update (Personal)

Hana Evie ♥ April 6th, 2025

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Fix Yourself

Last year, I applied for a scholarship to attend a week-long retreat designed to help participants recognize and address negative patterns that were unconsciously conditioned in childhood. As part of the application, I responded to questions like:

How will your experience affect the people in your family?

And I began my response with this:

The family members who stand to gain the most from my experience are undoubtedly my future children. They are the driving force behind my commitment to healing and self-discovery. If I were to have children without first doing “the work,” I risk passing on my destructive habits and emotional pain to them. This is a harsh reality…

Before writing that response, I couldn’t quite articulate why I felt called to do self-work. But, as is usual for me, I figured out my “why” through the written word. And, to my surprise, that “why” was predicated on people who didn’t even exist yet.

The thing is, we’re all born to imperfect parents. And as we grow up, we inherit all the programs and patterns modeled by our parents. If a parent struggles with harmful patterns—impulsivity, pessimism, catastrophizing, blame-shifting, procrastination, self-sabotage, jealousy, etc.—and doesn’t do the difficult introspective work to break those patterns, then they risk passing them down to their children.

Well, I was a child once, and in childhood I acquired lots of harmful patterns. I even developed some distinct unproductive behaviors of my own. If I were to ever become a mother myself one day, I would need to dismantle and rework the harmful behaviors I adopted, lest I pass those on to my own children. Trying to be a “good” parent would be hard work… I won’t have the capacity to deal with my own demons, too. So I may as well address those first.

If blessed with the time and self-awareness, I believe it’s important for new parents to confront and heal some of their destructive behaviors before bringing new life into this world. Note how I say “some.” By some, I mean the most important ones, the ones causing you the most hardship. The ones that would cause your children the most hardship if they were to catch them from you. No matter how much self-work a parent does, no child grows up unscathed. No parent, no person, is going to dismantle all their imperfections. Not in this lifetime, at least.

That said, if the opportunity for preventative self-work has come and gone and your kids are now adults themselves, it’s never too late to model positive change. Chances are, the patterns your children adopted from you have been passed down over many generations. They didn’t start with you, and they weren’t your fault. They are coping mechanisms your ancestors took on, not knowing they would one day take a toll on generations to come.

Patterns and programs are exactly what they sound like: patterns and programs. They are installed, conditioned, learned. People are not perfectionists or workaholics or people-pleasers by nature… they are experiencing patterns of perfectionism and workaholism and people-pleasing by nurture. With practice, patience, and a whole lot of persistence, patterns like these can be undone. And when we do “the work” that’s required to undo them, we show our loved ones that it’s possible for them to undo their harmful patterns, too.

II.

Devices

Did you know that there’s a whole range of smart alert systems designed to remind you when you’ve left your baby in the car? Some even come with an app—so when you remember to grab your phone before exiting the vehicle, but forget your child, you’ll get a push notification.

The first time I saw one of these “solutions” recommended to me on Amazon, I thought it had to be a joke. People leaving their babies behind in the car? Getting a notification to remind you that you left your baby? Where are people’s heads at these days?

Well, fortunately, leaving babies behind in a hot car is not a common occurrence for 99.9999% of parents. Companies selling these products are banking on overly anxious moms (see Idea #1 to address this pattern) and/or overzealous regulation that mandates their adoption. But my question remains: Where are people’s heads at these days?

For many people, their heads—their minds—are in the smartphones that were not left behind in the car.

One study found that millennials spend an average of 5 hours and 28 minutes per day on their phones, while Gen Z—the next generation of parents—spends 6 hours and 27 minutes daily. Walk down any street, and it feels like half the people have wireless earbuds in or their eyes glued to a screen. Whether the distraction is visual or auditory, the result is the same: when we’re absorbed in our devices, we’re disengaged from the people around us—including our children.

These days, new parents can fill up a baby registry with every gadget and gizmo under the sun. But one of the most essential things your baby needs won’t come from an Amazon box or your Aunt Becky—and that thing is your attention.

III.

Emotional Intelligence

The best gift you can give your children is to keep yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually healthy.

Jessica Joelle Alexander and Iben Sandahl, The Danish Way of Parenting (2014)

The emotions of babies and young children are much like mountain weather: inconsistent and erratic. Newborns enter the world without a clue how to regulate the profound inner storms we all experience within. To grow into emotionally mature adults one day, children need role models who demonstrate healthy emotional regulation. They need parents who have rewired their own faulty conditioning and are emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually whole.

According to psychoanalyst Erica Komisar, 85% of the right brain (the emotional brain) is developed by age three. This means that deep connection with a sensitive, empathetic, and nurturing primary caregiver is crucial during a child’s first three years. In most cases, that primary caregiver is the mother. When a baby is overwhelmed—caught in the turbulence of a rogue mountain storm—they need someone who can soothe them and temper their emotions from moment to moment. Every time a mother comforts a baby with skin-to-skin, eye contact, and a gentle tone, she’s not only attending to that baby’s pain but also teaching them self-regulation. The foundation for emotional well-being is laid in the earliest years of life.

That week-long retreat I mentioned in Idea #1 (which I received a scholarship for!) is known in the self-help world as The Process. Founded by Bob Hoffman in 1967 and run by the Hoffman Institute, this program primarily teaches participants to recognize and regulate their emotions that have likely been dysregulated since childhood. While I found the experience worth my while, it’s perhaps not necessary for everyone to spend thousands of dollars to go to a retreat center in California for a week to get in touch with their feelings.

What is needed, however, is an awareness of how our emotions influence our behavior. As adults, when we experience the wrath of a rogue mountain storm, we often fall back on coping mechanisms—our patterns and programs. We lean on these patterns to avoid feeling our feelings rather than letting them pass through us. A spiritually healthy person knows that difficult emotions are part of life; we all feel depression, anxiety, and fear at times. But if we can engage our left brain (the rational brain) to recognize that emotions are simply a part of life and have no control over us unless we let them, then we can gradually rewire ourselves to become emotionally healthy adults. We don’t need to remain inconsistent and erratic forever.

IV.

Beyond Self

Sometimes we focus so heavily on trying to be a “good” parent that we forget just how sacred, priceless, and special parenthood really is.

5 quotes to remember:

Both a baby and a poem masquerade as something we’ve created, when we know that they arrive from somewhere beyond us, that they are gifts.

Beth Ann Fennelly, Great with Child (2006)

I don’t remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.

Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions (1993)

Children are our guides to the higher spiritual planes.

Stephen Gaskin, quoted in Spiritual Midwifery (1975)

Children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naive and so frighteningly complex.

Yevgeny Zamyatin, On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)1

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

V.

Setting Expectations

I was a wonderful parent before I had children.

Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

Let’s be real—I’m not yet a parent myself and I’ve been writing about what it means to be one. While I can conceptualize what I’m getting myself into, I have yet to break down over lack of sleep and bodily autonomy. I have yet to be brought to the furthest edge of my patience. I have yet to transform into the person I’m meant to become when I truly Know what it means to be a mother.

As of this writing, I’m hanging out somewhere between 41-42 weeks pregnant, and our baby will make her grand appearance any minute now. I’ve spent months mentally preparing myself for what’s to come, but even if I studied and prepared my whole life for the moment I became a parent, I’ll never be able to expect all the ways in which my life will soon change forever.

There will be mistakes. There will be undesirable patterns. There will be tears and sleepless nights and gray hairs and fights and utter pandemonium.

But there will be love and there will be light and a whole lot of heaven, too.

+I.

A Lot

I often think that parenting is really an exercise in our own development and growth; when we have kids, we are confronted with so many truths about ourselves, our childhoods, and our relationships with our families of origin. And while we can use this information to learn and unlearn, break cycles, and heal, we have to do this work while also caring for our kids, managing tantrums, getting by on limited sleep, and feeling depleted. That’s a lot.

Becky Kennedy, Good Inside

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Multifaceted

A woman is biological, historical, cultural, political, social, personal.

Biology: The dictionary definition for a woman is an adult female person. This typically means XX chromosomes, female reproductive systems, and a feminine physique. Biologically, women have been differentiated from men based on genetics and anatomy.

History: The word “woman” originates from combining the words “wife” and “man.” In fact, before the word “woman” became customary, an adult female used to be called a “wifman.” Throughout history, women were treated as subordinate to, or property of, men. Aristotle once described women as “mutilated men”—suggesting they were the biologically weaker sex.

Culture: While the cultural perception of women varies across cultures, in Western contexts, women have often been depicted in dualist extremes— either saintly (e.g., Virgin Mary) or sinful (e.g., Eve). Over time, feminism has reshaped these narratives: from the domestic 1950s housewife to the liberated 1980s career woman. Today, conversations around gender fluidity and intersectionality further complicate the matter.

Politics: Depending on the system she lives under, a woman is whatever the system says she is: a citizen, a threat, a resource, a statistic. In early democracies, women were excluded from politics—they had no voice or vote. In monarchies, women’s political power was contingent upon their proximity to patriarchy—as queens, regents, or noble wives. Today, women and men have equal rights on paper, but the reality of equality is still a work in progress.

Social: The domestic 1950s housewife was the homemaker, bread-baker, kid-raiser, and husband-anchor. She was agreeable, ladylike, motherly, married. Today, while those expectations persist, women are also urged to be entrepreneurs, influencers, crusaders, and trailblazers.

Personal: At her core, a woman is whoever she chooses to be, not what is expected of her. She’s resilient, versatile, powerful, exceptional.

II.

Expectations

Be the perfect wife, mother, and career woman.

Pursue success, strength, and independence.

Sacrifice your time, your dreams, your body.

Act agreeable, caring, and accommodating.

Put family, colleagues, and others first.

Face harassment, bias, and pay gaps.

Stay slim, sophisticated, and young.

Tolerate, endure, smile.

III.

Dos and Don’ts

Have opinions, but don’t be too opinionated.

Raise children, but don’t leave your job.

Stay informed, but don’t get political.

Cater to others, but don’t complain.

Look sexy, but don’t seek attention.

Be smart, but don’t be a smartass.

Eat well, but don’t eat too much.

Achieve, but don’t intimidate.

Grow up, but don’t grow old.

Lead, but don’t be bossy.

Embrace womanhood, but don’t defy expectations.

IV.

Worth

A woman’s worth isn’t hinged on fertility

or humility

or docility

or civility

or utility.

All a woman needs to be is herself—

to the best of her ability.

V.

The Capable Sex

The idea that women are “The Weaker Sex” has no support in scientific fact. Quite the contrary. There is every evidence that women are biologically more able to stand physical and psychological stress than are men.

John. A Schindler, M.D., Woman’s Guide to Better Living (1957)

While calling women “mutilated men” wasn’t exactly the kindest way to describe the second sex, Aristotle did have some positive things to say about women—namely, that they have a greater capacity for rational learning, are more strategic, are more thoughtful in child-rearing, and have a superior memory. Women, he noted, naturally embody the virtue of prudence—the “mother” of all virtues.

While society sets some heavy expectations upon women, I say to hell with them. The only expectations women should pursue are those they set for themselves. And they have every reason to set the bar high. If you want to be a mother and a manager, do it. If you want to be a wife and a writer, do it. If you want to be an entrepreneur and educator and explorer, do it. If you want to inspire and influence and invent, fucking do it. Do what you want, do epic shit, and defy the drab expectations laid out for you.

When a woman channels her creativity, invests effort in her ideas, and uses her talents to shape the world around her, she won’t be confined to the life others expect for her—she’ll design one that’s rich with purpose and meaning.

She can be Marie Curie: the two-time Nobel-prize winning scientist and widowed mother of two who revolutionized atomic physics.

She can be Harriet Tubman: the nurse, scout, and spy who led her people to freedom, commanded an armed Civil War expedition, and built a family through remarriage and adoption.

She can be Ada Lovelace: the world’s first programmer and mother of three who predicted that computers would one day manipulate symbols, compose music, and create art.

She can be Elizabeth I of England: the self-reliant Virgin Queen who ruled independently for 44 years, navigating wars, religious turmoil, and economic transformation.

+I.

Know Thy Self

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)

Women (and men) are happiest when they’re taking action towards their life’s vision. But not just any old action will do. Only when we unite our thoughts, words, and actions around our highest calling do we feel most fulfilled.

Read more

Deep Stuff

When I talk about spirituality and being spiritual, I am describing an attitude toward God and the inner journey of enlightenment. I am speaking of expanding the godlike qualities of love, forgiveness, kindness and bliss within ourselves.

Wayne Dyer, Your Sacred Self (1996)

From a material standpoint, we are all made of star stuff. The most widely accepted theory for the origin of the universe is that everything began as one extremely hot and dense singularity which violently exploded 13.8 billion years ago, creating all the “star stuff” we know today. Matter, elements, stars, planets, fundamental forces, and even space and time are all believed to have originated from this one big cosmic event.

From a spiritual standpoint, we are all made of spiritual stuff. By “spiritual stuff,” I mean nonphysical stuff: consciousness, intuition, dreams, supernatural forces, a metaphysical dimension beyond/behind/between the physical. While there’s no single widely accepted theory for the spiritual side of things, people of every religion and culture seek to connect with a deeper reality through meditation, prayer, ritual, devotion, yoga, wu wei, and whatnot.

When humans tinker with physical matter, they learn that the physical universe is governed by physical laws: gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, conservation laws, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, etc. And when humans explore spirituality, they learn that the spiritual dimension is governed by supernatural laws: the Law of Attraction (i.e., the Law of Action), Cause & Effect, Will, Love, Success, and many more.

II.

Law of Cause & Effect (Karma)

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation… His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954)

Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. When a rocket expels hot gases downward (action), the gases push back with equal force, propelling the rocket upward (reaction). When a rower pushes water backward with an oar (action), the water pushes the boat forward (reaction). This principle highlights the interconnected nature of all forces in the universe, demonstrating a fundamental balance and symmetry that underpins our physical reality.

While it’s obvious that action and reaction govern our physical world, what’s not so obvious is that it also applies to the nonphysical (mental and emotional) domain. Let’s call this phenomenon the Law of Cause and Effect, or, put simply, karma.

In everyday life, we witness the Law of Cause and Effect in action when we act hostile towards another person and the feeling is immediately reciprocated. But the effects of karma don’t always happen instantly. If we gossip about another person, they may not discover it until days later and then compensate by treating us poorly. In some cases, karma plays out over a much larger time span—for example, if we quit a job in bad faith years ago and find out that a former colleague we wronged is now in charge of hiring at our dream company.

Karma operates on its own timeline, and if we’re not mindful, it may seem as though the universe is random and all nonphysical interactions act in isolation from one another. But everything is connected. Just as Newton’s third law ensures that physical forces are always met with an equal and opposite reaction, karma teaches us that every thought, word, and deed we send into the world will eventually return to us. The consequences may not be immediate, and they may not unfold exactly as we expect, but they always come back in equal measure.

III.

Law of Will

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Plato, Laws (~350BCE)1

According to spiritual law, humans are free moral agents in complete control over our thoughts, emotions, speech, and actions. But it doesn’t always seem that way. That’s because the different aspects of our being—our bodies, emotions, minds—each have a “will of their own.” When we’re hungry or restless, our bodies crave a snack. When we see someone with something we want, envy rises within us. When we allow our minds to wander freely, intrusive and unproductive thoughts emerge.

We share the same instinctual drives—the same bodily “will”—as all other animals in the animal kingdom. But, as humans, we’re higher spiritual beings who possess the ability to exert conscious, reasoned willpower over them. If we wish to wait to delay eating to preserve our appetite for dinner, we can exert conscious will over our body’s desire to eat now. If we wish to acknowledge feelings of envy without allowing them to take control, we can exert conscious will over our emotions by choosing calmness and peace. If we wish to be productive and focused, we can direct our conscious awareness on a specific task rather than let it roam aimlessly.

Every feature of our behavior is ultimately determined by the aspect of our being with the strongest willpower—be it body, mind, or higher self. The more we strengthen our conscious will through intentional effort and practice, the easier it becomes to break the habit-formed will of the body and mind. And, in doing so, we become more advanced spiritual beings. Though easier said than done, we possess the strength and willpower to take control of ourselves and our lives.

IV.

Law of Love

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment—or unlearning—of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love (1992)

There are thousands of entire books written on the subject of love. So attempting to distill it into one short, pithy idea is no small feat. But I think this passage from Marianne Williamson sums up what we need to know quite well. Love is a reawakening, a relearning, a remembering. That’s because, at our fundamental core, we are Love.

The journey back to Love begins within. Before we can love others, we must first love and accept ourselves. I believe that every aspect of our being—our bodies, minds, interests—are things that we intentionally chose before we arrived on Earth. We choose to incarnate at a particular time and space to learn a particular lesson. We choose the sex, race, country, and family that would offer us the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth—knowing damn well that all the greatest lessons in life result from the greatest hardships. We choose a hard life because we’re here to learn and grow. We’re not here to spend our time resenting our choices or criticizing ourselves. Life is about learning how to love the predicament we’re in and make the most of it.

Once we learn to love ourselves, it becomes so much easier to love others. We can learn to love our family members because we understand that they, too, chose a hard life. We can love all other beings because we recognize that no life is without struggle. When we live through Love, we see that everyone is just trying to do the best they can with what they know. We all struggle, we all make mistakes, and we all pay the price. Though our individual journeys differ, we share an essential existential fate. And our shared essential existential fact is that we must find our way back to our core, our spirit, our Love.

V.

Law of Success

A “wish” is a desire without energy. After a wish may come “intention”—the plan to do a thing, to fulfill a wish or desire. But “will” means: “I act until I get my wish.” When you exercise your will power you release the power of life energy—not when you merely wish passively to be able to obtain an objective.

Paramahansa Yogananda, The Law of Success (1944)

We control our own bodies, but we do so in accordance with physical laws. We control our own destiny, but we do so in alignment with spiritual laws. The Law of Cause and Effect reminds us that every action carries consequences that return to us in equal measure. The Law of Will affirms that we can rise above the habitual patterns of our body, emotions, and mind through conscious willpower. And the Law of Love reveals that Love is the fundamental truth of existence.

But what about the Law of Success?

Success comes from the Latin successus, meaning “a good result, happy outcome.” It doesn’t mean status, wealth, or power. Instead, the Law of Success asks us to find happiness in life. And the way we do that is by discovering what fulfills us.

Each of us is born with a specific vision for our lives. The vision has always been there, quietly surfacing in our thoughts and dreams, but we haven’t always claimed it as our own. (Perhaps that’s because it’s not the vision of our parents, ego, or society.) However, when we love and accept ourselves for who we are, our vision becomes clearer. By prioritizing it and directing conscious attention towards it, we advance in its direction. When we take action, we become like the rocket which expels hot gases downwards and is subsequently lifted off the ground. The more action we take, the more momentum we create.

+I.

Other Spiritual Laws

Read more

You Are Not Your Mistakes

“I’m a big dummy.”

Those were the last words I heard from my father-in-law before he left Reno the other day. I handed him his cell phones through the open passenger-side window and countered, “No you’re not!” as Hunter sped off.

Ben had left his phones (work + personal) charging in our guest bedroom and didn’t realize it until he and his son had arrived at the airport. They’d spent the whole drive talking, savoring the last few moments they’d have together before being separated, yet again, by 1,800 miles and six states. When Ben realized his oopsie, Hunter called me, I grabbed the phones, hopped in another car, met them halfway, and made the handoff on the side of the road. It was No Big Deal. It felt good to take action and avert a crisis. And I was more than happy to do it.

But, those words.

When Ben and Hunter initially left the house, we had already exchanged our formal farewells—“goodbye/thank you/bon voyage”—and I basked in the glowing aura of gratitude one feels after family and friends travel across the country to visit. So when the phone rang, I welcomed the unexpected chance to actually demonstrate my appreciation for the man who makes the necessary sacrifices to visit us several times a year. I was high on my own gratefulness supply up until I heard those words.

“I’m a big dummy.”

It hit like a wet fish across the face. Aura, poof. Gratitude tank, busted. I’m cringing now as I reread those untrue, unforgiving, thoughtless words. How could Ben say that about his own self?

I wondered why those words struck me so intensely. And then I realized that I had heard them before—from Ben’s own mouth. Rather than saying, “I made a mistake” or “I did a dumb thing,” he’ll sometimes say, “I’m a big dummy.” But he’s not. He’s at least half the reason why my husband is the smartest person I know.

When Ben said what he had said, I was struck by the weight of the deeper self-criticism he carries. And it reminded me of the deeper self-criticisms we all carry. Instead of acknowledging a specific action as wrong (e.g., “I failed at this task”), we’ll sometimes wrongly identify ourselves with our undesirable actions (e.g., “I’m a failure”). In psychology, this is called mistaking guilt for shame. And most everyone is guilty of this. We’ll say things like “I’m not good enough” or “I’m defective” or “I’m unworthy” or “I’m unlovable” or “I’m disgusting” or “I’m not deserving” or “I’m bad” or “I’m destructive” when we believe we’ve made the wrong decision or taken the wrong action. But making mistakes, and feeling a sense of guilt, plays a vital role in refining our behaviors over the long run. That guilt reminds us not to make the same mistake twice.

Shame, on the other hand, occurs when we believe our mistakes transpire because we are fundamentally flawed in some way. When we feel shame, we’ll say unkind things about our own self, the only self we’ve got. Our worthy, capable, lovable, delightful, prosperous, creative, brilliant selves. We can be our own worst critics and our own worst enemies. When we make an ordinary mistake, like leaving something behind, no one else worries about it as much as we do. But no one else learns from it as much as we do, either. Rather than perceiving that mistake as part of our identity, we can change the way we speak to ourselves. We’re all guilty of doing dumb things sometimes (hello—we’re all human here), but we’re not dummies.

II.

The Future Starts in Your Mind

I’ve read several “woo” books that insist on the legitimacy of a Law of Attraction. Some of those books include The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, and The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn. The Law of Attraction is proposed as such: Your beliefs shape your reality. What you think about, comes about.

As someone who perceives themselves as more pragmatic than their New Age counterparts, I find it challenging to get on board with a concept—let alone one deemed a “Law”—that cannot be proven via the scientific method. From an analytical standpoint, it seems like wishful thinking, but from an intuitive sense, there does seem to be something to it.

Before I began writing, I believed myself to be a writer. Before Hunter proposed, I secretly called him my “future husband.” Before earning a Director-level title at my last job, I imagined getting that title. Before I quit my job, I journaled about quitting my job. Before I met Richard Branson, I visualized meeting him (and even promised myself I’d get a selfie to prove it).

None of these things happened in reality without first happening in my mind.

While the Law of Attraction cannot be proven using the same tools that we use to measure physical anomalies, we do have empirical evidence of its existence. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of racial equality. Jeff Bezos envisioned an online “everything store.” Tim Berners-Lee imagined linking hypertext with the Internet to create the World Wide Web. What these people thought about, they brought about.

When we set our minds toward a future outcome, we consciously and subconsciously move toward that outcome. This isn’t woo voodoo, it’s mental priming. Our repetitive thoughts form our beliefs. Those beliefs shape our future desires. And those desires guide the actions we take. And the actions we take determine how receptive we are to opportunities that might otherwise go unnoticed.

The universe doesn’t attract a specific outcome to us; rather, we gravitate toward the outcome we are most familiar with. When we envision a goal, believe in our ability to achieve it, and put in the necessary work, we increase the likelihood of making that vision our reality.

III.

Becoming Your Beliefs

At my most recent prenatal visit, while discussing postpartum expectations, my doula asked if I had a history of anxiety and depression. I replied, “I’ve experienced symptoms of depression in the past and know what to look out for, but I do not consider myself to be a depressed person.”

That response was very much intentional.

In the past, when I experienced depression and was subsequently medicated for it, I labeled myself as a “depressed person.” And the more I identified with that label, the deeper I sank into negative thought spirals that reinforced my belief. It wasn’t until I started saying “I experience depression” when I recognized that those harmful patterns were entirely separate from me and susceptible to breakage.

When we view our struggles as something we experience, rather than fundamental aspects of our identity, it becomes easier to break free of our undesirable patterns. Our thoughts not only shape our external reality by influencing our actions and awakening us to opportunities we might otherwise overlook, but they also shape our identity. For example, if we constantly tell ourselves that we are destructive, we are prone to subconsciously take destructive actions. Our minds and bodies trust in our thoughts and move in the direction that aligns with our deep-seated beliefs. If those beliefs are untrue, unforgiving, or thoughtless, then it is up to us to challenge them, rewrite them, and correct course.

IV.

Law of Action

After writing about the Law of Attraction, I’ve realized what bothers me most about this concept—the “attraction” part. So, I move that we rename the Law of Attraction to the Law of Action.

Any seconds?

In Idea #2, I referenced a few books that advocate for the Law of Attraction, but I deliberately left out two: Think And Grow Rich by Napolean Hill and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (which is also a documentary). What I dislike about these two resources in particular is that they exploit the human desire for prosperity by selling the idea that the secret to wealth is: Ask and you will receive. Desperate people cling to the promise of “attracting” money just as they gravitate towards MLMs, stock rallies, and other get-rich-quick schemes. But the only thing humans are capable of “attracting” into their lives is problems. That’s precisely why I think the Law of Attraction must be renamed the Law of Action.

Nothing happens without action. We can think all we want (and Lord knows we do), but our thinking will lead us nowhere without the domino effect of Thought → Belief → Desire → Action.

Once we’ve begun taking action toward a desired outcome, our minds shift into high alert—recognizing and pursuing opportunities that can accelerate our progress. This heightened awareness may create the illusion that we’re “attracting” success, but we’re not. The truth is, those opportunities were likely always there. We just failed to notice them when we refused to act.

V.

Action Breeds Optimism

From Man’s Search for Meaning:

The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? “No, thank you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

+I.

A New Identity

Read more

Toolbox

I love big ideas.

I love running novel mind software.

I love viewing the world from different perspectives.

That’s why I read.

And whenever an interesting person tells me about a book that changed their perspective or made them think twice, I add that book to the top of my reading list. That’s how I came across Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Just a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of Rand or her work. All I knew was that this magnum opus of hers left a lasting impression on someone I know to be intelligent, hardworking, and kind. So I bought the book, began reading, and quoted a few passages in my last newsletter.

And that’s when I learned that Ayn Rand is a divisive figure.1

A couple dozen folks unsubscribed from my newsletter, while one reader wrote to tell me that, despite never reading Rand, they consider her work “an assault on human dignity.” Well, shit. Would’ve been nice to know that before diving into an 1100+ page novel. At this point, I was already over halfway through the story, and my dignity was still intact (as far as I could tell). Would finishing Rand’s novel overhaul my beliefs for the worse, or would it provide me with yet another perspective in my toolbox with which to view the world and understand the people in it?

Guess there’s only one way to find out.

II.

Extremes

Substack writer Alex Dobrenko, author of the Both Are True newsletter, reminds us (and himself) that the truth often resides in the messy middle. While ideological extremes may contain some truths, they also contain untruths.

An example of this can be found in Joe Rogan’s Burn the Boats comedy skit:

So I understand why people wanna be on a team. So you just try to find a team that aligns with your values, right? What does your team believe?

“We believe that healthcare is a basic human right.” I agree.

“We think that education should be free.” Me too.

“And men can get pregnant.” Fuck! Is that a package deal? How did that one slip through?

Now back to Rand.

Among other staunch beliefs, Ayn Rand was an uncompromising advocate for laissez-faire capitalism. Laissez-faire is French for “let do,” and an optimal laissez-faire system is one in which the market is free to “let do” what it will—with no regulations, no government restrictions, just pure, unchecked capitalism. The opposing extreme to laissez-faire capitalism is communism—the “let don’t” model—which abolishes private ownership, centralizes economic control, and entrusts all decision-making to the state. On one end of the spectrum, capitalists have no guardrails; on the other, they have no freedom.

Despite their stark differences, both laissez-faire capitalism and communism share a fundamental flaw: they both assume a perfect society populated by perfect people conducting perfect transactions. Laissez-faire capitalism presupposes an ideal free market where everyone has equal opportunity, access to perfect information, and no external distortions like monopolies or corruption. Communism, in turn, envisions a utopia where class distinctions vanish, exploitation ceases, and the state equitably meets everyone’s needs. And both systems hinge on the assumption that those in charge—whether capitalists or politicians—will act with perfect morality and justice.

But we know that reality is far from perfect—it’s in the messy middle. So the more we commit to an ideological extreme, the more we must rely on myths to sustain our beliefs.2

III.

Messy Middle

I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose... It’s what keeps us locked in “either/or” thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace “socialized medicine”. It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006)

In late October 2024, with the U.S. presidential election fast approaching, Substack writer Adam Mastroianni published the findings of his Ideological Turing Test.

The goal? To see how well Republicans and Democrats actually understand each other.

To test this, Mastroianni and his fellow researchers asked a group of Republicans and Democrats to write brief statements explaining why they support their own party. But there’s a catch: Half of the participants were asked to write statements pretending to be from the opposing party (i.e., Democrats writing statements as if they were Republicans and vice versa). To ensure sincerity, participants were financially incentivized to make their statements as convincing as possible (rather than resorting to strawman arguments).

A second group of Republicans and Democrats was then asked to read these statements and guess which ones were real and which were fake.

The results? Fake Democrats and fake Republicans were just as convincing as the real ones.

While I’m non-partisan (and always have been), I took the test myself to see if I could spot the fake Democrats and fake Republicans. I scored 60% on my first try and 50% on my second try. For the third try, I guessed at random by selecting “REAL” for every statement—and ended up with 70%. It’s not every day that I perform worse than chance…

So, how did the fakers pull it off?

Well, if you ask me, the fakers were able to pass as real partisans because they didn’t take their statements to the extreme. Democrats pretending to be Republicans didn’t write statements like, “I’m a Republican because I believe that all immigrant families should be broken up and deported.” Instead, they wrote things like, “I’m a Republican because I just want to live my life… I don’t want the government in my business any more than they have to be.”3

In the digital town square, both sides often paint exaggerated caricatures of each other. Left-leaning media portrays all Republicans as far-right extremists, while right-leaning media insists that all Democrats are far-left extremists. And while Joe Rogan once joked that Democrats believe men can get pregnant, we all know that the majority of Democrats either (1.) don’t fully believe this or (2.) don’t view it as a political priority. In fact, many statements from real Democrats and real Republicans suggested that the views of their party mostly aligned with their views.

Excerpts from real responses (emphasis my own):

• I am a Republican because the Republican party is what I most identify with.

• Mostly, I consider myself a democrat because the Democratic Party most closely aligns with my personal morals and values.

• I chose republican because the party itself aligns their beliefs with a more conservative approach which better describes me.

• I am a DEMOCRAT because it is the political position that resonates most closely with me.

Source: Ideological Turing Test

At the end of the day, most people—Republicans, Democrats, Independents—aren’t extremists. Their core beliefs exist somewhere in the messy middle.

IV.

Diversity

We’re all familiar with external diversity: race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual identity. These are aspects of identity we don’t choose; we’re either born with them or not. But what about diversity of thought?

Etymologically, the word “diversity” means many things: variety, difference, oddness, disagreement. By the late 18th century, with the rise of modern democracies, diversity was first recognized as a national virtue—a safeguard against any one faction consolidating power. However, the virtue of diversity wasn’t tied to external identity. It was considered a difference of the mind.

Our diversity—our variety, difference, oddness, disagreement—is shaped by our experiences. A Black American, an Indian immigrant, and a disabled woman will inevitably see the world differently than a stereotypical white man in the United States. And their unique lived experiences influence their views, values, and understanding of society. But while external identity can signal a novel perspective, it’s not the only path to diverse thinking.

While a white woman will never fully understand what it’s like to be a Black man in America, she can still engage with Black perspectives—by reading Black authors, listening to Black voices, and immersing herself in Black stories. And while someone born and raised in the U.S. will never experience life as a young woman in Communist Russia, they can read works from the likes of Ayn Rand to understand how growing up in a classless society with collective ownership of production has shaped one woman’s views on capitalism.

The reason why we study history and the humanities is not to blindly repeat the past—it’s to better understand what worked, what failed, and why. The reason why we read the works of controversial figures is not to embrace their utopian or dystopian visions, it’s to better understand why they imagined the world that way in the first place.

The other kind of diversity—diversity of thought—is available to anyone and everyone. We may never walk in another person’s shoes, but we can step into their perspective, however briefly, through their stories. And in doing so, we expand our own.

V.

Controversy

Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don’t.

Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road (2015)

Censorship is bad. Free speech is good.

Donald Trump is bad. Kamala Harris is good.

Socialists are bad. Capitalists are good.

Guns are bad. Disarmament is good.

We’ve all heard these arguments before.

His opinion is bad. Mine is good.

If you disagree, you’re bad. If you agree, you’re good.

But is reality really this dichotomous?

Controversy is bad. Conformity is good.

Controversial figures are, by nature, diverse figures. Steve Jobs called them the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They see things not as black-and-white, good-or-bad, either/or. They see them as they really are.

These folks are not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. And when they come out of the woodwork, you can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Think Different ad (1997)

Controversial figures change the world by championing perspectives we might not have previously considered. They may be right. They may be wrong. But one thing’s for certain: they make us think—whether we like it or not.

Perhaps both are true. Perhaps both are false.

+I.

Intellectual Humility

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Thomas Sowell, “A childish letter” for Jewish World Review (1998)

Read more

Interest

3 quotes that piqued my interest:

I hold that the aim of life is to find happiness, which means to find interest.

A.S. Neill, Summerhill (1960)

This again, tallies with what Goethe says in Wilhelm Meister: The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest happiness in using it.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech (2005)

I hold the belief that we are all uniquely designed to do something specific.

Albert Einstein was uniquely designed to unravel the mysteries of the physical universe. Jane Goodall was uniquely designed to study primates and their relationship to humans. Milton Friedman was uniquely designed to research economics and advocate for free markets. Oprah Winfrey was uniquely designed to host her own talk show and inspire millions. Jennifer Doudna was uniquely designed to develop CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology. Joe Rogan was uniquely designed to turn his curious conversations into a popular podcast.

Had these individuals pursued paths that were not uniquely designed for them, they likely would’ve failed. What would become of Oprah the accountant or Einstein the artist, the world would never know. Had Jane Goodall’s parents pressured her to become a ballerina or Joe Rogan’s mentors expected him to become a lawyer, they would’ve had to suppress their intrinsic interests to pursue work for work’s sake. As Steve Jobs puts it, they would’ve settled.

You and I are uniquely designed to do something specific, too. While pursuing our intrinsic interests may not make us incredibly rich or famous, they will make us happy and useful and fulfilled. They will be our best bet for great work. Our interests are not things we choose, nor can they be given to us by others—they are part of our essential nature, and we must discover them. And when we do, we should heed Einstein’s advice to “never lose a holy curiosity.”

II.

Intention

Never confuse Motion with Action.

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791)

Life is motion. Motion is the constant of life. Everything in the universe, including us, is constantly moving through space-time. Even when standing still, we continue to move through the dimension of time.

Man’s life is action. Action is motion born of intention. Intentions can be either conscious or unconscious. Conscious intentions are purposeful, emerging from desire and interest, while unconscious intentions lack purpose, emerging from conditioning or coercion.

The only “possessions” we carry from the day we’re born until the day we die are our actions. Our entire lives are shaped by our actions, and we cannot escape the consequences of our actions. If we allow our lives to become a series of aimless actions, we’ll likely find ourselves at midlife wondering, “How did I get here? Who is this person that I married? Why didn’t I hone my craft when I was younger? What am I supposed to do with my life? Is it too late?”

And while we won’t be able to do anything to rewrite the past, it is never too late to begin aiming towards a meaningful pursuit. Our interests spawn the possibility of action, and our actions spawn worthwhile achievements. When we allow our interests to guide our actions, we gain clarity and understanding about how we got to where we are—because we’ve created it through purposeful action.

III.

Wishing

Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it must be transformed. By transforming our intentions into actions, we produce things in the physical world. Alternatively, merely wishing for an outcome without taking action will not produce anything besides depression.

Depression is essentially “deep rest.” We know that deep rest is helpful for recovery and redirection, but as creative beings in a creative universe, we can’t remain in a state of deep rest for long, lest we drive ourselves crazy with all that pent-up creative energy. We are here to exert energy, not to spend our lives deep resting. So we’re left with a choice: Create or stay depressed.

When you’re genuinely interested in the work you’re doing, you’ll sometimes feel as if you can work at it for hours or even days on end. You lose track of time, you forget about deep rest, and the crippling fear and anxiety you once had when you were just sitting, waiting, wishing for something to happen falls away.

Remember: Wishing won’t work until you do.

IV.

Value

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

Albert Einstein, LIFE Magazine (1955)

I once worked as a talking head within an industry that owed its existence to government intervention. I worked with lobbyists and legislators to draft bills requiring companies to purchase specialized equipment and participate in corporate responsibility schemes. I made capitalists cringe.

And I made myself cringe.

In a perfect free market, trade is an honest transaction. Buyers and sellers voluntarily agree to exchange money for products or services, and both parties are satisfied with the deal. Free markets encourage innovation, promote competition, improve efficiencies, lower costs, and reward hard work. Alternatively, in a heavily regulated market, trade isn’t always voluntary or fair. Instead of focusing on creating the best product or service possible, some folks would rather leverage their political pull to mandate the purchase of their product or service. This creates an environment where innovation is stifled, competition is discouraged, inefficiencies rise, costs increase, and cronyism thrives.

Since we don’t live in a perfect world, we can’t have a perfectly free market. But we should at least strive for greater freedom in our transactions. We should aim for honest and voluntary exchanges where both parties agree on the terms. We should foster creativity, productivity, and entrepreneurship. And we should trust customers’ judgment and allow the market to determine where true value lies.

V.

Money

3 ideas on money, with quotes from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

1. Money is a tool to trade value for value.

So you think that money is the root of all evil?... Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.

2. Those who acquire money in immoral ways will despise money because, for them, it is symbolic of their corruption.

Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil.

3. Those who acquire money in honest ways will love money because, for them, it is symbolic of hard work and virtue.

To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money—and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it.

… Some final fiscal food for thought:

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)

+I.

Merit

I was one of those kids with a grim future. I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me. Today people look at me, at my job and Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit.

J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

Read more

This week’s update is prompted by Susan Cain’s post, Can you help me with my book proposal?

In her request, she shares a quote from poet Joseph Massey:

Art, poetry, music, all forms of true beauty, prayer, and meditation—these are the things that will save us as individuals and, if we’re lucky, civilization.

Susan writes, “This idea is a cousin to the thesis of the book proposal I’m writing, and it would really help me, if you agree, to explain WHY you believe this statement is accurate. If you disagree, or aren’t sure, explaining why would be just as helpful. Please feel free to draw on examples from your own life - in fact, these would be especially illuminating.”

PS: If you have ideas of your own to share with Susan, you can provide those in the comments section of her post.

♥︎ JH

I.

Creative Outlets

Art, poetry, music, all forms of true beauty, prayer, and meditation—these are the things that will save us as individuals and, if we’re lucky, civilization.

Joseph Massey (emphasis my own)

According to Massey’s statement, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to save humanity. Unique beings require unique methods of saving. To begin, let’s explore the first three things that may save us—art, poetry, and music.

Our creative outlets are the means by which we release the pent-up creative energy inside us. Another way to release this energy is through addictions and unhealthy coping mechanisms, but if given a conscious choice over how to release our creative energy, most would opt for artistic expression over vicious cycles. But, unfortunately, most people live life unconsciously most of the time (I’m talking through experience here), and that’s why we have so many mental and emotional struggles and not enough art. By choosing creativity, we are making a conscious choice over how we want to expend our energy. And when we’re exceptionally attuned to our intuition, we can better identify which particular creative outlet is a perfect fit for us.

While signing up for pottery or painting classes would be a better expenditure of my creative energy than numbing myself with Facebook or food, I was not uniquely designed to be a potter or painter (as cool as that would be…). Instead, I’ve found that I am supposed to spend much of my creative energy writing. But let me clarify: Writing was not my choice. I wanted to be a corporate executive, a public figure, a Very Important Person. However, when I suppressed my creative instincts to pursue these ego-driven ambitions, I found myself turning to unconscious coping mechanisms to release the energy that should’ve gone into these here ideas. It was only after surrendering to intuition that I (reluctantly) began writing.

What I’ve discovered in embracing my creative calling is that I don’t really know what I think until I write. In other words, I don’t know who I am until I write. I imagine this is how most people feel when they’ve found and pursued their creative calling: through their art, they discover who they really are.

II.

Truth

Art, poetry, music, all forms of true beauty, prayer, and meditation—these are the things that will save us as individuals and, if we’re lucky, civilization.

Joseph Massey (emphasis my own)

When I first read “true beauty,” I instinctively broke it into two ideas: “truth” and “beauty.” So let’s explore both.

There are at least two definitions for “truth.” The more common definition is related to accuracy or fact, while the other refers to a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality. If you’re familiar with my writing, it shouldn’t surprise you that I’d much rather discuss the latter right about now—the capital-T Truth. And, conveniently, this lesser-known definition of truth feels more fitting in this context anyhow.

As an undergraduate, I studied Biomedical Sciences—a degree program housed in the “College of Arts and Sciences.” At the time, I didn’t understand why my academic path was grouped with airy-fairy subjects like philosophy and religious studies. But during my senior year, while dating a musician, I had a strange epiphany: both music and chemistry have a unique language.

In fact, nearly every discipline has its own language, its own system for conveying ideas and truths. Programming languages, medical terminology, legal jargon, mathematics, physics, taxonomic nomenclature, architectural blueprints, technical diagrams, field notes, economic paradigms, philosophical abstractions, psychological models, religious symbols.

But what are all of these fields actually trying to uncover at their very core? What is the ultimate goal of economics, anthropology, fine arts, and engineering? If you ask me, I think all creative and scientific disciplines are working towards explaining the same fundamental Truth; they’re just using their own vernacular and taking their own approach to get there. And I think that the capital-T Truth is that we are creative beings in a creative (and, perhaps, created) universe. And our ultimate goal, both individually and collectively, is to create more beautiful things and reduce disorder in ourselves and the world.

III.

Beauty

In Idea #1, I explored creativity from the creator’s perspective. Now, I’d like to look at it from the observer/experiencer’s perspective.

Pablo Picasso is believed to have said, “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” The “unnecessary” in this case is clutter, disorder, excess. Beauty—whether in the form of a pristine painting, a virtuoso verse, or a melodic marvel—exhibits order and harmony and brilliance. When a work of art captures our heart and soul, it’s because we recognize some truth in it. As creative beings, we resonate with beauty because we embody beauty.

But, of course, we have some not-so-beautiful parts, too: inner noise, emotional havoc, somatic imprints. External beauty can alleviate (and maybe even cure) our inner disorder because it reminds us to eliminate the unnecessary within us. When Cheryl Strayed hit rock bottom—impoverished, divorced, addicted to heroin—and hiked the Pacific Crest Trail to reclaim herself, she kept the words of Emily Dickinson close to her heart:

If your Nerve, deny you –

Go above your Nerve –

These words revealed a truth to Strayed: she could eliminate her unnecessary fears and find beauty within herself. There’s an Emily Dickinson poem out there for all of us—a beautiful something that can reveal some hidden truth within us. Be it through art, poetry, music, or something else.

IV.

True Beauty

Because of the varied definitions for truth, using “true” as an adjective can be quite tricky.

For instance, true love suggests a sincere and profound love.

And a true story suggests a factually correct story.

And one’s true colors suggest one’s authentic, essential nature.

And then there’s true beauty—which is a rather perplexing concept if I do say so myself. But good thing there’s AI to tell me what stuff means these days.

When prompted with “What is true beauty?” Claude replies:

This is a profound philosophical question that has been debated across cultures and throughout history. Rather than offering a singular definition, I’d like to explore several perspectives:

In classical philosophy, Plato suggested that true beauty exists as a perfect, unchanging form - an ideal that earthly beautiful things merely reflect. This points to beauty as something transcendent and universal.

Eastern philosophies often locate true beauty in the imperfect and transient - the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi finds beauty in impermanence and incompleteness. Similarly, Zen Buddhism sees beauty in simplicity and naturalness rather than artificial perfection.

From a naturalistic perspective, some argue that our sense of beauty evolved to help us recognize health, fertility, and beneficial environments. This suggests beauty might be fundamentally tied to life-supporting qualities.

Even the AI is stumped—and by “stumped,” I mean that it cannot settle on a single definition. Perhaps that’s because true beauty is subjective; it’s in the eye of the beholder. We all have different interests, we gravitate toward different disciplines, and we have different ways of communicating ideas and truths. I experience true beauty in literature and illustrations. My husband experiences it in engineering and architecture. And we both experience it while skiing in the snow-crowned Sierras.

When it comes to “all forms of true beauty,” it’s worth remembering that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. And, as Plato (and Claude) suggest, all manifestations of true beauty point toward something transcendent and universal.

V.

God

Art, poetry, music, all forms of true beauty, prayer, and meditation—these are the things that will save us as individuals and, if we’re lucky, civilization.

Joseph Massey (emphasis my own)

Perhaps it was the words “prayer” and “meditation” that enticed me to take these 5 Big Ideas in a more ethereal direction. Or maybe it’s the fact that I genuinely believe we are creative beings in a creative—and created—universe. The universe is truly beautiful; it has the precise constants, forces, and conditions necessary to accommodate intelligent life. If the universe were significantly different than it is now, we would not be here now. It’s almost as if this world was anthropically designed for us.

This observation often leads to a cascade of unsolvable questions: Who/What are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose? Who/What created the universe? Where do we come from? What happens when we die? What is consciousness? Where do we go when we dream? What is intuition? Where do ideas come from? Are we alone in the universe? Who/What is God? Etc. etc. etc.

And when we ask these questions out loud, people give us the side-eye and pretend that they don’t have the same questions circulating through their minds. But they do.

And I digress.

Why Joseph Massey decided to group “prayer and meditation” with “art, poetry, music,” and “true beauty” is anyone’s guess, but I’d like to think it’s because they all point toward the transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality that is sometimes referred to as Truth. If this is indeed a created universe, then the act of creating (“art, poetry, music”) and the experience of creation (“true beauty”) offer us glimpses into the mysteries of the universe itself. While prayer and meditation offer us an opportunity to commune directly with the source of these mysteries—the creator of the universe. Prayer is speaking to God; meditation is listening for His reply.

+I.

Saving Grace

Art, poetry, music, all forms of true beauty, prayer, and meditation—these are the things that will save us as individuals and, if we’re lucky, civilization.

Joseph Massey (emphasis my own)

Before proposing solutions to save individuals and civilization, we must first understand what is destroying them. I think the cause of said destruction can be summed up quite nicely in one word: Disorder.

Inner disorder. Outer disorder.

Many religions posit that the universe operates according to some natural order. Some even assert that a divine creator shaped the universe from pre-existing chaotic matter. Creativity is the means by which we humans create something out of pre-existing matter—we make ceramics from clay, computer chips from silicon, houses from trees, plastic from crude oil, textiles from cotton, steel from iron and carbon. We create things to expend energy, solve problems, and discover who we are.

Emily Dickinson wrote poetry to explore her inner world. Vincent van Gogh painted to save himself. Leonardo da Vinci was driven by an insatiable curiosity about the world around him. Marcus Aurelius penned personal reflections that, unbeknownst to him, would become Meditations. Those who create truly beautiful things often do so primarily for themselves. They receive some kind of metaphysical inspiration and then expend the energy required to manifest it into a physical reality. When we encounter a truly beautiful masterpiece, we say that it “speaks” to us. We don’t quite know how or why this is, but, in a way, it’s reminiscent of prayer and meditation—it’s as if the spiritual inspiration behind the art is trying to tell us something about life’s mysteries through its very creation.

I think it’s safe to say that art, poetry, music, all forms of true beauty, prayer, and meditation have the power to save the individual. By creating things, we bring order to the world around us. Through true beauty, we calm the chaos within. While prayer and meditation connect us to Truth—they are the means by which we access our intuition and answer our unique calling.

But when it comes to civilization writ large, we need a culture that prioritizes true beauty over materialism and inspires individuals to do what they are uniquely designed to do rather than chase money and power. To foster such a culture, we should celebrate those guided by wisdom and intuition, rather than glorifying celebrities who promote hollow values.

Gandhi is often misquoted as saying, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” But what he actually said is far richer:

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Opinion

As we change, we inspire others to change. By seeking Truth and beauty and creativity, we inspire others to do the same. Imagine a society in which everyone finds purpose and fulfillment in their work, everyone collaborates to foster harmony within themselves and the world, and everyone holds love, virtue, and true beauty as the highest ideals. Such a society is possible, but it must be led by example. We can begin by setting an example within ourselves.

We need not wait to see what others do.

Conditioning

Source

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, future children are born and raised in state-controlled Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres where they are destined to Neo-Pavlovian conditioning, hypnopædic programming, and emotional engineering tailored to their predestined social class. Higher classes—Alphas and Betas—are conditioned to prioritize pleasure and avoid pain, while lower classes—Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons—are conditioned to slave away in Fordist factories and fear things like nature and books, which might interfere with their assigned roles.

While we do not inhabit Huxley’s dystopia, we do share something in common with its meticulously conditioned citizens: we too are susceptible to conditioning.

That begs the question: Are we?

According to Toltec wisdom shared by Don Miguel Ruiz, “The human mind is like a fertile ground where seeds are continually being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts… we become a copy of Mamma’s beliefs, Daddy’s beliefs, society’s beliefs, and religion’s beliefs.” The patterns and beliefs repeated around us take root in our minds and become our programming, for better or for worse. Over time, these learned behaviors obscure our intuition (i.e., our “inner tutor”)—which is our natural, unconditioned modus operandi.

The more we cultivate the seeds of culture, the more difficult it becomes to break free. We become attached to our conditioning; addicted to the programs running our lives. And instead of uninstalling outdated or harmful programs, we pile on more. Atomic Habits, Think and Grow Rich, The 10X Rule—New Programs, Better Programs, 10X Programs! Eventually, the cycle becomes self-sustaining; we internalize the role of our own domesticator, reinforcing the very conditioning we wish to escape.

II.

Freedom

“What would it be like if I could, if I were free—not enslaved by my conditioning?”

“But, Bernard, you’re saying the most awful things.”

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

In the dystopian novel, people are well aware of their conditioning. After all, conditioning is viewed as essential for the greater good of society—for Community, Identity, and Stability. Brave New People are taught how to think and what to think. They don’t know what it’s like to be unconditioned, and the thought of doing life without automatic programs is the stuff of nightmares. Having to think for oneself is the stuff of nightmares.

In another dystopian novel, George Orwell writes, “Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” Orthodoxy is conformity, conditioning. It’s blindly accepting the conventional narrative without question, surrendering intuition to the safety of groupthink.

Yet, the only freedom that matters in life is the freedom to think our own thoughts. Our minds are all we really have, and they are all we have to offer others. They differentiate us and define us as individuals, not our race or age or gender or nationality or occupation or disability status or whatever. Without our minds, without organic thought, we’re just another Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. We’re just another casualty, conditioned to an unconscious caste.

III.

Individual

We are all given individual tasks, individual journeys in life. According to Carl Jung, “Finding the inner meaning of life is more important to the individual than anything else.” But finding meaning requires courage to step into the unknown. Thinking for oneself is scary indeed.

“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely,” John says to Bernard in Brave New World. Because our minds are what differentiate us from one another, holding a different perspective comes with the risk of ostracization. Thinking different means being different. That’s the cost of true freedom.

One of humanity’s greatest fears is the fear of rejection. Men and women will go to great lengths to be accepted, loved, included. They’ll ignore their own intuition and adopt the opinions, ideas, and concepts of others, even if it results in inner warfare. Self-doubt, self-hatred, self-abuse… all for other-approval. But what about the Self?

Most people tragically confuse aloneness with loneliness, but they are entirely different. Aloneness is enjoying the company of one’s Self while loneliness is longing for others’ company. It’s been said that George Bernard Shaw once attended a cocktail party filled with shallow chatter and meaningless exchanges—we all know the kind. When asked if he was enjoying himself, Shaw replied, “It’s the only thing I’m enjoying here.” That’s the beauty of aloneness: being so self-assured that your own company is enough.

Ironically, most cocktail partygoers attend endless events and social gatherings not out of a love for connection, but to avoid being with themselves. They say they fear loneliness, but they actually fear aloneness. They fear facing their own self-disapproval.

IV.

Culture

Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much of it if you sit still and read books.

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Culture is societal conditioning—programming designed for community adoption; a uniform way of thinking and feeling about the world. To fit into the culture and be part of the mold, one must shed their individual beliefs and align with the collective consciousness.

When I ask Claude what “culture” is, it responds:

Culture is a complex system of shared understandings, behaviors, customs, knowledge, and values that shape how groups of humans interact with each other and interpret their world.

And when I ask it to share some trends in culture, it responds1:

Digital Evolution:

• Growing anxiety about AI

• “De-influencing” movement

• Shift toward digital minimalism

Social Patterns:

• Growing interest in solitude

• Rise of micro-communities

• Increased focus on mental health

Entertainment:

• Nostalgia-driven content

• Interactive entertainment

• Short-form video dominance

Lifestyle:

• Climate anxiety influencing choices

• Rise of “third spaces”

• Digital nomad and remote work culture

Identity & Society:

• Fluid approach to gender expression

• Multi-hyphenate careers

• Changing definitions of success

Growing anxiety, movements, shifts, interests, increased focus, entertainment (i.e., distraction), influences, rises, approaches, expression, changing definitions. This is how the collective thinks and feels about things these days. This is how you should think and feel about things, too.

But how did the culture come to be the way that it is? Why is there a heightened focus on mental health, climate anxiety, or gender fluidity? The answer lies in ideologies. Ideologies are “idea programs” that shape how we think about something. When you subscribe to an ideology—be it liberalism, conservatism, populism, capitalism, socialism, feminism, nationalism, transhumanism, secularism, or any other “ism”—your perception is filtered through its lens. Instead of seeing reality for what it is, your thoughts and opinions are shaped by the idea program.

V.

Faith

I used to believe that unhealthy patterns stemmed, at least in part, from a lack of faith. But I now realize that this is untrue. All people have faith, but the real question is: Faith in what?

When we think of the word “faith,” we often think of Faith in Good, or Faith in God. This is the kind of faith that can help us awaken to our intuition and rid ourselves of harmful programs. When the prevailing faith is Faith in Good, we think more good thoughts and feel more good feelings. And we become less likely to adopt ideologies or beliefs that conflict with our Faith in Good.

But the other kind of faith is Faith in Evil, also known as fear. Fear is not the absence of faith; it’s redirected faith. It’s placing one’s faith in evil rather than good. When the prevailing faith is Faith in Evil, we think more anxious thoughts and feel more helpless. When we live in fear, we are especially susceptible to all sorts of conditioning. We install new programs to distract us from the way we feel inside. And the more programs we install, the less autonomy we have, and the harder it becomes to access our intuition. You will not listen to your inner tutor if you are afraid of it.

+I.

How to Uninstall Programs

Source

Read more

Happy New Year!

While I had planned to write a year-end review for 5 Big Ideas by today, life had other plans. And, by “other plans,” I mean back-to-back viral infections that left me bedridden for nearly a week. So, that post will have to wait.

In this New Year’s post, I share Big Ideas from others that are sure to serve you in 2025. These ideas transcend mere habits and hacks by getting to the heart of what’s really important—healing, happiness, purpose, growing, and becoming. I wish all of these things for you and more. May this year be your best year yet.

♥ JH

I.

Release

To embrace a new beginning, we must first release what has tethered us to the past.

A helpful exercise on letting go:

As you read this, take a deep breath and, as you exhale, allow all the tension to leave your body. Let your scalp and your forehead and your face relax. Your head does not need to be tense in order for you to read. Let your tongue and your throat and your shoulders relax. You can hold a book (or a smartphone)* with relaxed arms and hands. Do that now. Let your back and your abdomen and your pelvis relax. Let your breathing be at peace as you relax your legs and feet.

Is there a big change in your body since you began the previous paragraph? Notice how much you hold on. If you are doing it with your body, you are doing it with your mind. In this relaxed, comfortable position, say to yourself, “I am willing to let go. I release. I let go. I release all tension. I release all fear. I release all anger. I release all guilt. I release all sadness. I let go of all old limitations. I let go, and I am at peace. I am at peace with myself. I am at peace with the process of life. I am safe.”

Go over this exercise two or three times. Feel the ease of letting go.

Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life

(addition my own)*

II.

The Process

Happiness is found in the journey, not the destination.

It’s in the anticipation, not the award.

It’s in the chase, not the catch.

It’s in the pursuit, not the pinnacle.

It’s in the striving, not the succeeding.

It’s in the now, not the future.

The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them. Three hundred sixty-five days later, we try again and find that the same thing has happened. Each time the goal is reached, it becomes Not So Much Fun, and we’re off to reach the next one, then the next one, then the next.

That doesn’t mean that the goals we have don’t count. They do, mostly because they cause us to go through the process and it’s the process that makes us wise, happy, or whatever. If we do things in the wrong sort of way, it makes us miserable, angry, confused, and things like that. The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.

Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

III.

Meaning

In case you’re still looking for a New Year’s resolution, here’s one that’s sure to keep you engaged all year long:

If man no longer finds any meaning in his life, it makes no difference whether he wastes away under a communist or a capitalist regime. Only if he can use his freedom to create something meaningful is it relevant that he should be free. That is why finding the inner meaning of life is more important to the individual than anything else, and why the process of individuation must be given priority.

C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols

IV.

Influencers

While you can’t control the circumstances you were born into, you can choose who you become. Social capital is scarce, but you can still surround yourself with promising and prosperous perspectives—whether in person, books, videos, or podcasts.

They say, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” But what if those people are Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Laozi, and Jesus? What if you spend more time engaging with the wisdom of great minds than you do chit-chatting with the Negative Nancys and the Debbie Downers? Who will you become more like?

Who will you let influence you this year?

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become.

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

V.

Knowledge

What do you plan to learn this year? This lifetime?

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics, why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics until it is time to learn to plough.”

T.H. White, The Once and Future King

+I.

Duty

When you’re feeling particularly unmotivated, remember: You’ve only got one shot at this thing called life.

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Trad Wives—Explained

I recently stumbled upon the cultural phenomenon known as “trad wives.” For the uninitiated, “trad wives” is short for traditional wives, and the term is often used to label female social media influencers who capture their lives as stay-at-home moms, domestic chefs, homesteaders and homemakers. With over 20 million followers1, the quintessential face of today’s trad wife movement is Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm and Goose Gazette. Her content features making pasta from scratch, milking sheep, entertaining eight kids without screens, giving birth at home, and prepping for pageants less than two weeks post-partum. And, by doing so, she’s pissed off some women who argue that “constantly selling this idyllic, romanticized version of motherhood that is wildly impossible for the vast majority of people feels sort of like a form of gaslighting.”

A typical trad wife video (Source)

Another critic of Hannah’s includes writer Megan Agnew of The Times, who published a profile in July portraying Hannah as “the cowering victim of a tyrannical husband,”2 and described the trad wife lifestyle as a “hammer blow for feminism.” Hannah responded to the article, saying:

A couple of weeks ago, we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business. We thought the interview went really well... We were taken back, however, when we saw the printed article, which shocked us and shocked the world by being an attack on our family and my marriage—portraying me as oppressed, with my husband being the culprit. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion, which leads me to believe the angle taken was predetermined… We are co-parents, co-CEOs, co-diaper changers, kitchen cleaners, and decision-makers.

The controversy surrounding Hannah Neeleman and The Times only catapulted Ballerina Farm’s visibility (as they say, there’s no such thing as bad PR), leading to dozens of Substack essays on “trad wives” and coverage in major publications including Forbes, Vanity Fair, and, most recently, The New York Times.

II.

In Defense of Women

For this next idea, I originally set out to steelman an argument in support of the domestic lifestyle that some women have chosen. After all, I know plenty of women who’ve decided to step back from their professional lives—either temporarily or permanently—to spend more time at home with their children. As far as I’m aware, they don’t regret it. Even bestselling author and queer activist Glennon Doyle once fit the mold of a “trad wife,” staying home as a mom and Sunday School teacher while blogging about “her life as a progressive Christian raising three children.”3

In my early twenties, I viewed stay-at-home moms as incompetent, privileged, and, well, conservative. I would’ve likely agreed with Megan Agnew’s description of an oppressed Hannah Neeleman. I would’ve likely agreed with Naomi Fry of the Critics at Large podcast who felt a strong “hate reaction” to the trad wife videos circulating on social media. And I would’ve likely agreed with Anne Helen Petersen who told Trevor Noah, “They [traditional wives] really believe that woman should have no power, that woman should not be educated; they really believe this... their larger goal is control over woman’s lives and their bodies.”

Back then, I often declared that I wanted a stay-at-home husband so that I could climb the corporate ladder, be the breadwinner, wear the pants. And I dated lousy men who would gladly fill that role.

But my views have changed.

I’ve changed.

But not in the direction you might think.

I’m not here to tell you that my inner pendulum has swung from radical feminist to dogmatic traditionalist on this issue. Rather, the ideological friction I’ve encountered on both extremes has stilled it. In other words, I’m in the middle. I support women who remain child-free by choice and travel the world, build badass businesses, and create a life they love. I also support women who start traditional families and bake bread, homeschool, and create a life they love. But I don’t support women who put down other women just because they made a different choice.

“Comparison is the thief of joy” is a phrase often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, though its exact origin remains uncertain.4 (It wouldn’t surprise me if it was first said by a woman.) We know that comparing ourselves to others makes us bitter, depressed, and miserable. And we’re quick to forget that no woman has it easy; no woman has it “made”; no woman has it all figured out. Not the glamorous Childless Cat Lady who had the most successful stadium tour in human history; not the gorgeous OnlyFans model who slept with 100 men in one day; not the gracious VP of the U.S. who led a spirited Presidential campaign and accepted a defeat; not the glorious homesteading mother of eight who married a wealthy man and built a Ballerina Farm.

We see people not as they are, but as we are. And many of us are insecure, envious, prejudiced. Especially when we spend too much time on social media, scrolling through the picturesque bits of another’s life. If Ballerina Farm’s posts are intentional gaslighting, then so are your best friend’s posts of her fabulous vacation in Venice and her flawless wedding in Hawaii and her fun girl’s night out. Social media profiles are not real life; real life is hard and filled with difficult choices and even more difficult consequences for those choices. But who are we to say that someone else’s choice is the wrong one?

Brianna Wu recently said of the trans movement:

There’s a message you can give people, which is: ‘Look, this is my body, my life. I’m going to take this medication, I will accept the responsibility myself, just let me go make my own choices.’ People are on board with that. They’re not on board with: ‘We’re going to announce our pronouns when we meet each other, and if you screw that up, you’re going to be socially ostracized.’

There’s just this entire culture that’s gone with the trans movement that seems crazy to me—a trans woman. Until that changes, we’re going to keep losing ground.

Until women stop ostracizing other women for the choices they make and the responsibilities they take, the feminist movement will keep losing ground, too.

III.

The Gap Year

At the ripe age of 22, I finished my bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences, took the MCAT, and applied to med school. I had some time to kill before I heard back about my application, so I drove my Jeep Grand Cherokee across the country, sold it, and used the money I’d saved from my part-time waitressing job to book a one-way flight to Hawaii with just a backpack. There, I worked at a hostel, exchanging about 16 hours of leisurely labor each week for free accommodations. I’d teach myself to surf, pick up under-the-table shifts at a happenin’ bar, and meet travelers from all across the globe.

Among those I met were two German friends, just a couple years younger than me. One was named “Mads,” which I thought was peculiar. During a tour to one of the film locations for Jurassic Park, I’d learned that Mads and Friend were taking a “gap year” between high school and what they called “Uni.” Their parents funded their travels, but they were frugal, staying in $10-$30 hostels and cooking meals in communal kitchens. They’d already traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia before arriving in Hawaii, and the next adventure on their docket was a road trip across the continental U.S.

Growing up in dog-eat-dog America, I’d never heard of a gap year prior to Mads and Friend. According to the nonprofit Gap Year Association, a gap year is defined as “a semester or year of experiential learning, typically taken after high school and prior to career or post-secondary education, in order to deepen one’s practical, professional, and personal awareness.” While some people engage in backpack tourism during their gap year, others work internships, volunteer, learn a trade, participate in cultural exchanges, pursue art, or play sports. During their gap year, Mads and Friend had only one job: figure out what course of study they wanted to pursue when they returned home. Mads was torn between business and economics. Friend was leaning towards psychology.

All the while, I was working at a hostel in Hawaii in a subconscious effort to derail the trajectory I was on. Could it be that, unbeknownst to me, I was engaging in a gap year (or, in my case, a gap semester) myself? I once passed out after getting my finger pricked… How would I survive a medical residency? I went straight from high school to college and pursued a degree my parents wanted. It wasn’t until I’d already graduated when I realized it wasn’t the right path for me.

IV.

Fork in the Road

Many people swing into action only to make things worse. They’re not coming from love, they’re coming from negative feelings. They’re coming from guilt, anger, hate; from a sense of injustice or whatever. You’ve got to make sure of your “being” before you swing into action. You have to make sure of who you are before you act.

Anthony De Mello, Awareness

At one point or another, I think most people find themselves headed down a path that’s not right for them. But when they reach this point—the fork in the road—what should they do?

Well, I’ll tell you what not to do: sell your car and hop on a plane to Hawaii.

Sure, it worked out for me. But I was young and had a lot of life ahead of me to figure out how I would turn my life around. And, thankfully, I did. I wouldn’t make such rash decisions now that I’ve matured a bit. Instead, I’d recommend you pop a squat under the fork—just as the Buddha sat down under the Bodhi Tree—and reflect deeply on what you really want out of your life. Perhaps you’ll be perched there, under the fork, for a week. Maybe a month. Or maybe you’ll be at that fork for a full gap year.

And what will you do while at the fork? Well, you could do as the Buddha did and meditate for 49 days… or you could read about things that interest you, build new relationships, learn a skill, pursue a creative venture, volunteer, and/or spend time with your family. Just as gap years give students a break from their studies to figure out what they want to do with their lives, they give adults a break from their adulting to figure out what they want to do with their lives. Recounting a gap year he took in his mid-twenties, Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, said:

If you are in the position between jobs where you can take a year off, I highly recommend it. I think it was one of the two or three best career things I ever did... I read many dozens of textbooks, I learned about fields that I had been interested in—nuclear engineering, AI, synthetic biology, investing—I started doing all this random stuff, and, out of all of it, almost all of it didn’t work out. But, the seeds were planted for things that worked in deep ways later.

The problem with the term “gap year,” especially for the hustlers and grinders out there, is that it implies taking a “gap” out of your life. Sounds awful, right? But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather than taking a year out of your life, a gap year should serve as a turning point. It can help put you on the right trajectory.

V.

Monkeys

An idea on “success” from Anthony De Mello:

Later we’ll talk about fear of disease and death, but ordinarily you’re worried about what’s going to happen to your career. A small-time businessman, fifty-five years old, is sipping beer at a bar somewhere and he’s saying, “Well, look at my classmates, they’ve really made it.” The idiot! What does he mean, “They made it”? They’ve got their names in the newspaper. Do you call that making it? One is president of the corporation; the other has become the Chief Justice; somebody else has become this or that. Monkeys, all of them.

Who determines what it means to be a success? This stupid society! The main preoccupation of society is to keep society sick! And the sooner you realize that, the better. Sick, every one of them. They are loony, they’re crazy. You became president of the lunatic asylum and you’re proud of it even though it means nothing. Being president of a corporation has nothing to do with being a success in life. Having a lot of money has nothing to do with being a success in life. You’re a success in life when you wake up! Then you don’t have to apologize to anyone, you don’t have to explain anything to anyone, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about you or what anybody says about you. You have no worries; you’re happy. That’s what I call being a success.

Anthony De Mello, Awareness

+I.

The Gift of Time

There’s only one gift under our Christmas tree this year.

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Hunter and I are expecting! Our first baby, daughter Hana Evie, is due at the end of March.

I.

Beyond Meat

But the awakened, the enlightened man says: I am body entirely, and nothing beside; and soul is only a word for something in the body. The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a herdsman.

Friedrich…

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Permission

I think the biggest reason people are afraid to express themselves is because they believe their ideas will not be good enough. But who gets to decide whether an idea is any good or not? Who is the arbiter of good ideas? (And how do I get in touch with them?)

The more you expose yourself to ideas—written, spoken, artistic, brilliant, bland, mindboggling—the more you realize that ideas come in all shapes and sizes. There aren’t just good ideas and bad ideas; big ideas and small ideas. There are ideas that strike a chord within you and those that don’t. The ideas that resonate with you may not resonate with someone else and vice versa, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the architect of the idea dared to write it down—to let it flow—and, because of that, the idea made its way to you.

The more you expose yourself to ideas, the more you’ll give yourself permission to trust in your ideas. You’ll read an entire book and think, “Wow, I could do better than that.” And you can. You can unleash your ideas into the world and give others the permission to do the same. And you will.

If you let your ideas flow.

II.

Holy Habits

As we enter the holiday season and begin drafting New Year’s resolutions, I urge you to consider setting goals that align with who you really are, not who you think you should be.

For years, I’ve set goals and resolutions that did not align with what I’m designed to do. I wanted to learn how to code, become super-model-skinny, start a podcast, get a promotion, acquire thousands of followers, learn Spanish, live abroad, and so on, so forth. These goals didn’t actually align with my intrinsic interests and God-given talents, rather, they were things that I thought I should want for myself. They were things that society told me were worthwhile.

And so I began every January off to a good start—learning new skills, working out, posting digital clutter, collecting XP on Duolingo—that is, until I got bored.

When we set habits that don’t align with what we’re designed to do, we inevitably find ourselves feeling burned out and cynical. This is not to say that we shouldn’t set high expectations for ourselves—we most definitely should—but we should set those expectations in the context of what we are called to do. If we don’t hone our intrinsic talents and interests because we’re too busy chasing the dreams of others, we’ll soon find ourselves in deep distress and regret. We’ll wonder what could’ve been had we followed our dreams.

So, before you set goals for the year ahead, take some time to better understand yourself. Who are you? What makes you feel fulfilled, aligned, purposeful? How would you spend your time if money weren’t an issue?

Perhaps, instead of setting tiny habits for yourself in 2025, consider setting the momentous goal of figuring out who you’re designed to be. And if you already know, set mindful habits to support you in your becoming.

III.

Evolution

I wasn’t always called to be a writer. My family is not particularly scholarly; we never had books at home; and when I was bored, I would play outside, watch TV, or draw. When asked what I wanted to be in elementary school, I would say a singer. When told that my dream was impractical, I decided to be a news reporter. By middle school, my parents told me I should aspire to be a doctor. That wasn’t appealing, so I went into business.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized I was called to write. At the time, I had a lucrative job but felt disconnected, misaligned, and purposeless. I worked with lobbyists to draft and push legislation I didn’t believe in. I lied about reality, truth, and science in front of crowds of so-called experts. I sacrificed my ethos and integrity for money and recognition. I lied to myself and I lost myself. And there was no way I’d find myself again while remaining in the illusion of “success” I’d created.

Before finding myself, I had to hit Rock Bottom. I had to surrender all the petty things I thought I wanted. I had to accept full responsibility for my one and only life. I had to reevaluate my values. Transvaluation of values, as Nietzsche put it.

From my experience, I believe what we are designed to do changes as we do. Perhaps we neglect a past calling, and while we’ll never know what could’ve been, we are given a second chance. We are granted as many chances as we need. We are never useless; we are only ever useful. And we are made to be used up. But it’s up to each one of us to find out how we can best be used in our lifetime. And when our purpose changes, we must find our new purpose.

IV.

Accountability

Who doesn’t love the idea of an eternal life in heaven? The notion certainly eases some of the existential dread that comes with mortal life on Earth. But I wouldn’t put all my eggs in the basket of a “life after life.” Doing so can make you feel less beholden to this life. And I don’t think it’s wise to feel any less accountable for our lives than we currently do.

The thing is, whether or not we’ll be given an afterlife depends on the choices we make and actions we take in this life. At this very moment in time, this life is the one we should be focused on. When another life comes, if it does, then is the time to focus on that life.

In this life, the average person can expect to live for about 4,000 weeks. (4,000 weeks = 28,000 days = 76½ years.) Regardless of how many weeks you’ve lived thus far, you’ve got some weeks to go.1 If you’re still alive, it’s for a reason —your mission here is not complete. If it were, you’d already be living the next life.

V.

Determination

My 90-year-old grandpa fell. My mom found him lying on the floor the following day. By that point, he had a brain bleed, was suffering from hypothermia, and could hardly speak. The ambulance came and rushed him to the hospital. He hates the hospital. His wife died at the hospital.

The hospital staff did the stuff that hospital staff do to 90-year-old people who arrive in grandpa’s condition. They gave him IV fluids and medication, put him on a ventilator, hooked up a catheter and feeding tube. As his brain swelling decreased and he realized what was going on, grandpa started disconnecting all the wires and tubes and gadgets that were hooked up to him. He was determined to get the hell out of there. He made plans for days ahead. He wasn’t going to die in that damn hospital.

The determination my grandpa has to live is unlike anything I’ve witnessed. I’ve recently had two other grandparents pass, and I never saw that level of determination in them. The desire to live was there, but not the determination. His determination—not health, not nutrition, not environment—is what I believe sets grandpa apart.

A couple years ago, I sent grandpa a copy of Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Like Frankl, grandpa lost his wife. Like Frankl, he found the meaning in suffering. Like Frankl, he never lost the resolve to live. Grandpa thanked me “for the literature,” and he never read the book. But he didn’t have to. He doesn’t need to read about what it takes to survive life’s greatest challenges because he has what it takes. He has the will to keep on living.

+I.

Success

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I.

Self-Awareness

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; Who looks inside, awakes.

Attributed to Carl Jung

I think the only real kind of awareness we can experience is self-awareness. We are aware of what it’s like to be ourselves—to experience thoughts and emotions through our body—and that’s about it. While we can observe other people and our environment, we’re unaware of what it’s like to be other people. And other people are unaware of what it’s like to be us.

Everything we experience in life is filtered through our programming. This “programming” forms the foundation of what we call our perspective—the way we view ourselves and the world, based on our past experiences and beliefs. And we have a peculiar perspective on just about everything.

To better understand the world and our place in it, it’s best we start by trying to understand our perspective. Is it spoiled, oversensitive, downright incorrect? Of course it is. That’s why we shouldn’t always trust our perspective. Instead, we should question it. The more we understand where our thoughts come from—where we’re coming from—the more we realize that not everything is as it seems.

II.

Judgment

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?

1 Corinthians 2:11 (KJV)

Other people, regardless of who they are and their relationship with us, are out for their own self-interest, not ours. Because we do not know what it’s like to be other people—whether our mother, brother, spouse, or best friend—we cannot trust other people.

Yes, you read that correctly.

In truth, we cannot trust other people because we do not know what is going on inside other people. We do not know how they will act, or react, under pressure. We do not know if they will undermine us, leave us, or hurt us. We do not even know what they truly think of us. Therefore, we cannot trust them. (Sorry, Mom.)

But what we can trust is our own judgment of other people.

When used properly, our judgment (aka discernment) lies between us and the other people in our lives. Because we cannot trust people and our perspectives are faulty, we can leverage judgment to paint a more accurate picture of what other people are all about. Our judgment can provide us with a second opinion, and hopefully a clearer one than the one we’ve already got.

If you want to improve your life and the quality of your relationships, I suggest you begin by improving your judgment. The more you practice good judgment, the less disappointment and frustration you’ll encounter. When some people let you down, which they inevitably will, you’ll recognize that it wasn’t their fault—it was your fault for poorly judging them in the first place. If you can’t trust yourself and your own judgment, who can you trust?

(PS: My judgment tells me that my mom is a pretty trustworthy person, after all.)

III.

Happiness

A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.

Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

Because everyone else is self-interested, they are concerned with creating their own happiness, not yours. Therefore, it’s prudent to make your own happiness a priority.

When I say “happiness,” I’m talking about a happy life, not happy moments. I’m not referring to shopping or sex or eating out at your favorite restaurant. True happiness stems from aligning your life with your values. Happy people don’t always experience happy days, nor does every day come easy for them. But those who commit to a principled and purpose-driven life often find greater and more enduring happiness than those who don’t.

If you neglect your own happiness, you risk losing faith in yourself. And the less faith you have in yourself, the less you can trust your own judgment.

IV.

Self-Sacrifice

Over two years ago, my sister did just about the bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed a person do: she called off her wedding. She chose her own happiness over her ex and the ex-pectations of others. If faced with the choice between my happiness or my newly-minted husband, Hunter, I’d choose happiness, too.

Thankfully for me, I don’t have to choose.

When my sister finally decided to end things for good, she and her then-boyfriend had already planned a weekend hiking trip with friends. While she intended to break things off after they returned, he decided to propose to her—in front of all their friends—on the first night of the trip. When he got down on one knee and asked The Question, what my sister really heard was, “Will you remain unhappy with me or humiliate yourself in front of all of our friends?” She said, “Yes.”

Thankfully for her, she mustered the will to end the engagement.

What’s the point of marrying someone if it costs you your happiness (and sanity, for that matter)? What would you expect to gain from such a relationship? Because other people are focused on their own self-interests, no one else is concerned with your happiness—so you may as well be. There’s no sense in sacrificing your happiness for others, and you should not expect others to do so for you. Why would you want to be in a relationship with an unhappy person? Why would you want to be an unhappy person in a relationship?

If Hunter had to choose between his happiness and me, I’d want him to do what’s right for him. If loving me came at the cost of his happiness, then it was never really love after all.

V.

The Myth of Selflessness

While selflessness is often perceived as a virtue, it can lead to unhappy people. And our society is already made up of too many unhappy people who believe it’s acceptable—honorable even—to sacrifice their happiness for love, and purpose for profits. In the truest sense of the word, self-less-ness means “a loss of self.” A genuinely selfless act is one in which a person’s actions are misaligned from their wants and needs. This includes self-sabotage, self-neglect, and self-sacrifice. When taken to extremes, selflessness can breed resentment, promote exploitation, erode identity, and lead to missed opportunities or dysfunctional relationships.

On the contrary, to be self-ish means to be “of the nature or character of one’s self.” In other words, selfishness is looking out for one’s own self-interest. All people are selfish to one extent or another, and the way in which our selfishness manifests matters.

When most people think of the word “selfish,” they think of someone who is narcissistic, conceited, self-absorbed. Essentially, they think of selfcenteredness. But selfcenteredness is not “of the nature or character of one’s self”—it’s an unhealthy behavior that leads to unhappiness, just like selflessness. Selfishness, if done right, can result in healthy behaviors and happy people. For example, I choose to be brutally honest with my readers because telling the truth makes me feel good. I do so in my own self-interest. Another person may volunteer to mentor disadvantaged youth because helping kids learn makes them feel good.

While our society leads us to believe that we should do good things in the name of “selflessness” and not “self-interest,” what does the motive matter if the outcome is the same? Why should doing the right thing require us to lose ourselves in the process? Oh, wait—it doesn’t. Helping people, living virtuously, forgiving others, and giving to charity makes us feel good. It’s of our nature and character to do these things. It’s comforting, delightful, dare I say, selfish. And thank God we can do things for others and feel good while doing it, too. That, my friends, is true selfishness. And it’s the closest thing we’ve got to heaven on Earth.

+ I.

Shooting Oneself in the Foot

I’d like to talk about another kind of selfishness—one that often surfaces around the family table during the holidays.

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Things to Think About

The past couple months have been full of things to think about: the presidential election, two major hurricanes, and my wedding, to name a few.

When I emailed the wedding venue a list of questions and didn’t hear back for days, I numbed my anxiety with politics. When politics became too unbearable, I directed my attention to the hurricanes. When I realized there was only so much I could do to help my family recover from severe flooding, I shifted my focus yet again to the wedding. Many nights went by when I prayed for no election, no storms, no wedding. These things took up so much headspace; my mind accelerated into emotional overdrive. And the worst part of all? The things I chose to fret over were almost entirely outside of my control. I felt out of control. I was out of control. I struggled to write about the things I set out to write about when I first started this newsletter a year ago, and I didn’t publish any big ideas for several weeks. I don’t even know if I had any big ideas.

But now, these events have passed. Trump was elected President. FEMA wrote my parents a disaster assistance check. And I finally married my favorite person in the whole wide world.

II.

Future Becomes Past

If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

Attributed to Lao Tzu

The mind operates in one of three states: past, present, or future. It does not hover in a liminal realm between divergent space-time continua. Put simply, at any given point in time, your mind is either with you in the present moment or it’s not.

Over recent months, my mind spent countless hours immersed in a fabricated future where every combination of political scenarios was plausible, natural disasters were both omnipresent and nonexistent, and my wedding fell apart in every conceivable way. This is a uniquely human dilemma. While prospection allows us to consider future scenarios and formulate plans, if we become too future-minded, we might emotionally anchor ourselves in a hypothetical projection that has no basis in reality. Or worse, through our thinking, we may inadvertently manifest the very conditions we fear.

As the anticipated future became the past and I find myself reflecting on the unfounded fears that once took up significant mental bandwidth, I realize two important lessons. The first is that my mind is unreceptive to big ideas when dwelling in the past or the future. Big ideas appear to exist only in the here and now. To continue doing the work I love and translating big ideas into actionable insights, I must return to the present.

The second lesson is that living in the future (or the past) is a bad habit. When all the election/hurricane/wedding drama was said and done, I found my mind craving the same anxious stimulation I had when these things were all eagerly awaited events. Why do I feel the desire to conjure up different outcomes than the ones that have already transpired? Why do I keep reliving the undesirable things that did or didn’t happen on my wedding night?

And why—God, oh why—do I feel the need to find something else to be anxious about?

III.  

Life & Thoughts

Life is objectively neutral. There’s birth, death, and all the stuff in between. And life is basically all the stuff in between. (Caution: stuff varies.)

But if life is neutral, why does living feel like suffering?

Living is subjective. We don’t view life from an objective lens when we are actively living it. Rather, we take things personally. Since we have only one life, we set expectations for that life. And when things don’t go as planned, we get upset. We lament, bemoan, suffer. And when things do go as planned, we yearn for those fleeting moments of happiness we once had. We cling, ruminate, suffer.

Living requires the mind to oscillate between thinking about the past, present, and future. Life, on the other hand, just happens.

Like life, thoughts are objectively neutral. As life goes on, thoughts come and go. I need to get tortillas for tacos tonight. According to some sources, people experience between 6,000 and 60,000 thoughts each day. Why did my mother-in-law tell her friend to give a speech at our wedding without asking me first? And regardless of the thought, a thought is just a thought. Wait, am I saying that all thoughts are neutral—even the bad ones?!

Thoughts are like clouds—they can be cirrus, stratus, cumulus, or even cumulonimbus. What determines whether a thought is “positive” or “negative” is our thinking about it. Most thoughts drift through our awareness like a faint cirrus cloud on a fair-weather day. But, sometimes, a stormy cumulonimbus catches our attention and we feel unsettled. Emotions arise when we subjectify a thought—in other words, we take the thought personally, and subsequently, we begin thinking about it.

Unlike thoughts, thinking is subjective. It’s a choice. Thoughts come and go without an effort, but thinking requires ample effort. Thinking is toilsome, demanding, suffering. For reasons beyond my pay grade, humans tend to think about the thoughts that evoke a negative emotion. They give significant chunks of their time and attention to the unstable cumulonimbus clouds, while overlooking the delicate cirrus clouds. Instead of letting an undesirable thought go, they think about it and think about it and think about it—fueling that thought with more and more emotional energy. The more we dwell on a specific thought, the less likely we are to notice new, creative thoughts. And the less receptive we are to big ideas.

IV.  

Intention

Intention = intent + attention

The easiest way to engage with thoughts is to allow your attention to wander aimlessly toward whichever thought feels the most emotionally charged. When life is riddled with anxiety-inducing future events (elections, disasters, weddings, you name it), you can just give your attention to the thoughts associated with those hot topics and neglect all the other important thoughts in life.

Or… you can engage with thoughts more intentionally.

To do so, you must first set an intention. If you’re living life without a purpose or direction, you’re at a much greater risk of giving your attention to the most emotionally unstable thoughts. Alternatively, if you have a clear goal or vision for your life, it becomes much easier to recognize which thoughts support your growth and which are distractions. When you sense an emotional reaction to an unproductive thought, you’ll see that thought for what it is—a temporary disturbance. Turbulence.

It’s impossible for us to stop having perturbing thoughts altogether, much like it’s impossible for the Earth’s atmosphere to stop producing tornadoes, hurricanes, and hail. But when we foresee storms ahead, we don’t run towards them. We prepare, seek shelter, and protect ourselves. The same principle can be applied to thought storms. Instead of being swept away by reactive thoughts, we can ground ourselves, stay calm, and weather them with resilience.

V.  

Ponder

5 final thoughts:

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Don’t think too much. You’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place.

Unknown

I think and think and think. I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Certainly the revolutionary thinker must go beyond thought. He knows that almost all his best ideas come to him when thinking has stopped.

Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Analysis paralysis”

Conventional wisdom