#84: Don’t wait for the next bookmark in life

#SelfOwnership #DeepReading #EverydayJoy #HumanPassion

Aug 16, 2024

👋 Welcome to Pursuit, where we explore the art of living well. My name is Amir, and each week, I go over 10 hours of content about personal growth and mental well-being, bringing you four insights and thought-provoking perspectives from leading thinkers. I hope to have a tiny impact on your life and inspire you with the tools to lead a more fulfilling life. Join us on this journey of continuous improvement and discovery.

This week’s discovery:

🔮 Take ownership of your future self
📕 Books or articles?
🔖 Don’t wait for the next bookmark in life
🧑🏼‍🎤 What will your verse be?

If you’re interested in listening to this week’s newsletter, you can follow Pursuit’s podcast on Spotify or other popular podcast platforms. Here’s this week’s episode:

🔮 Take ownership of your future self

How can I effectively distinguish between my former, current, and future selves to foster personal growth? In Take Ownership of Your Future Self, Benjamin Hardy tries to answer this question by drawing attention to the difference between our past, present, and future selves. Here’s a few of my highlights from this powerful article:

Despite awareness that our past self is clearly different than our present self, we tend to think that who we are right now is the “real” and “finished” version of ourselves, and our future self will be basically the same as who we are today. Your personality, skills, likes, and dislikes change over time — whether you’re intentional about that change or not. When you assume a label about yourself, you stop seeing alternatives. As Langer explains, “If something is presented as an accepted truth, alternative ways of thinking do not even come up for consideration … [for example] when people are depressed they tend to believe they are depressed all the time. Mindful attention to variability shows this is not the case.
The truth is, you’re not the same person you were in the past. You don’t do things the same way you once did. You no longer want what you once wanted. Instead of labeling yourself and focusing on who you are today, recognize how much you’ve grown and changed from your former self. It’s much easier to default to the present than to imagine a different future. But if you don’t take the time to imagine who you want to be, then you’ll reactively become whatever life drives you towards.

📕 Books or articles?

Sometimes when I'm reading a book, I wish I could grasp all the ideas in a shorter format. I often ask myself, are articles better than books? Shane Parrish shares an interesting idea about this question:

Our investment in reading changes the book because the book has changed us. ... If books are merely a means of transferring information, then perhaps, yes, a book is a waste of time. If a summary of its thesis and key points could be presented in a brief article or Substack post, why not just save the hours and read the Substack post? All the more if the information is outdated or questionable for one reason or another. But that mistakes what a book is for. A book is a tool. It’s a machine for thinking. And “all machines,” as Thoreau once said, “have their friction.” The time it takes to engage with ideas—whether factual or fictional, emotional or intellectual, accurate or inaccurate, efficient or inefficient—might strike some as a drag. But the time given to working through those ideas, adopting and adapting, developing or discarding, changes our minds, changes us. It’s not about the wisdom we glean. It’s about what wisdom we grow.

🔖 Don’t wait for the next bookmark in life

I know I’ve shared a snippet of “This Moment Is Your Life” by Nat recently, but damn… this piece is deep 😮‍💨 Every time I read it, I’m reminded how we should build our life around insignificant moments that give us joy. So here I go again, sharing another highlight from this post that came up timely with summer travel plans.

An eventful life is memorable, and the more memorable a period of our lives is, the longer it feels in retrospect. But the events that create the bookmarks of our life are not always the times we enjoy most, and often they’re out of our control. Some percentage of the appeal of travel is that it creates a signpost. It’s an easy way for us to extend our perception of time. The more we focus on these bookmarks though, the more we are stuck living ad interim. We judge moments as either a significant bookmark in time, or a means to some future bookmark. Most of our time is judged as a period that must be passed through until we reach the bookmark, or a period that must be spent to earn the next bookmark. Waiting and working.
And so we waste most of our life treating the simple moments as insignificant, because they were means to an end or inconveniences on the way to the next trophy. Your life isn’t wasted by missing out on trips to the beach. It’s wasted by not laughing in the checkout line.

🧑🏼‍🎤 What will your verse be?

Last Sunday, as I was reflecting on my weekend and listening to music, a song came on. The speech mixed into the track grabbed my attention. When I searched the words in ChatGPT, I realized it was from a famous scene in Dead Poets Society, played by Robin Williams. Here it goes:

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.
To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities filled with the foolish; What good amid these, O me, O life?’ Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

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🎵 Discovery for your ears

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs
🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house
🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house
🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house
🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit
🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych
🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments