Happy New Year!
As I mentioned the other day, while giant and immediately broken resolutions are fun, for my New Years, I'm thinking again about small habits. What we're up to moment-to-moment, or what we're actually thinking about during our frequent bursts of downtime, say a lot more about our character than any big giant choice. Who we are to the people around us when "no one is watching" is a lot more predictive of who we actually are than our annual review documents or our big essays about the forthcoming year. Among the small habits I like is this little practice of reading widely and finding some well-written essays on interesting topics to send to you. Thank you for reading!Among the habits I'd like to shed is a preoccupation with all of the money and status signifiers middle aged, middle class people notice. It's the stuff we think about without purposefully thinking about it. For me, that'd be money and house values and tax rates and kids activity costs. I become a frightening version of myself when I talk about how expensive my old house is to renovate and maintain; it's almost as bad as the other people at the lunch table, talking about how expensive their homes were to buy or their vacations to finance. Rich people problems! Some other people focus on health labels and related diagnoses (see the WSJ piece linked to below): these people so identify with their symptoms and their descriptors that there are entire trends of Tourette's or autism influencers on YouTube. It's wildly performative and truly frightening.
We'd be better off with less, as Arthur Brooks suggests in this podcast: becoming wise (sage, not prince), seeking to have and do less (reverse bucket list), and getting smaller. In what originally sounded like a non sequitur, at the end of the episode, Brooks answers a question about how someone with a pain syndrome diagnoses should live. He suggests to not identify with the syndrome and not struggle against its pain. It's counterintuitive, this wisdom of less, especially for the middle class strivers and the diagnosis influencers. If it's status and riches that matters, then we'd be on a never-ending treadmill; if it's health and its opposite that matters most, then we'd be on a race against reality. There'll always be someone richer and cooler than you; there'll always be pain and everyone will die. To embrace these realities by causing them to matter less is the way, through mindfulness, to peace.
Rounding out the reading are some tales of other things that may define one's life: the Grateful Dead (because, why not?) and devoting one's life to service (not fame). It's interesting to think about how following a band made people into better versions of themselves; it's challenging to think about how the ticket out of a terrible life isn't money and fame, but rather service. Enjoy the reading!
The swift rise in diagnoses for everything from autism to ADHD may be doing more harm than good.
Teenagers need something to worship. In the ’80s, it was the Grateful Dead. What is there now?
Laveranues Coles, who made $42 million in his NFL career, is being paid $32.92 an hour working for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.