is the smuggest way to say, “You have no idea what you are talking about.”
In isolation, it’s tempting to think you have it all figured out. That’s right, you’ve got the answers, the philosophy, the explanations, and even the tidy rationalizations to sweep away points of confusion. It’s all quite comfortable. Knowledge of confirmation bias provides nonexistent inoculation against this pathology.
You never have to be isolated, of course – there’s infinite information out there just begging for consumption. But the tricky stuff is not easily changed through dissenting voices and long hours in the library, because the tricky stuff is not a matter of facts per se. Rather, the tricky stuff is another way of saying “life philosophy” which is another way of saying the stuff you really, really want to get right but to which objective answers are fleeting.
And so, you sort through aphorisms and religions (and a whole lot in between) searching for what feels right. Toss in your experiences and the hard-won lessons of youth, and the tricky stuff may not feel that tricky anymore. It’s at this juncture where people trend toward being stuck in their ways, an isolation where new information is easily dismissed.
in witnessing a runner with an impressive pace suddenly stop. This halting reveals that the speed was not, in fact, an impressive pace, but rather a weak finishing kick.
There is something also quite pleasing in seeing a runner needlessly pause at a crosswalk. They’ll posture like they were forced to stop by the bad luck of the oncoming traffic; they may even jog in place trying to prove the cosmic unfairness of it all. We are not fooled. You needed to rest.
I guess these pleasures stem from being reminded of one’s own “goodness” in comparison. Maybe running isn’t your thing and so these examples escape you. That’s fine. Just think of where you do excel and what happens when others don’t measure up. There’s some relatable delight to be found in this exploration. More universally, this pleasant sensation drives the consumption of “Fall from Grace” stories, blooper reels, and reality TV (when people behave stupidly).
Equinox, since any girl wearing an Equinox hat is guaranteed to be fine.
Everybody’s got boring lives so they just sit around and talk about someone else’s.
she understood the presidential premium on flexibility.
Obama’s attitude could be seen a cavalier – or deeply cynical. But is also reflected an instinctive disdain for the conventional rules of politics. To Obama, the ritual parsing of these kind of statements was a tedious preoccupation of the media, an obsession few Americans shared.
No one ever thinks they don’t have the experience to do this. No one thinks that way. He wouldn’t have gotten tot his point and then said, “Oh, I don’t have the experience.” You don’t think about your weaknesses. You think about your strengths.
the shallowness of sanity
Many people assume that we must be, since sometimes one and sometimes the other would get a better review, the bigger advance, in some way “competitive,” that our private life must be a minefield of professional envies and resentments. This was so far from the case that the general insistence on it came to suggest a certain lacunae in the popular understanding of marriage.
Yet I was myself in no way prepared to accept this news as final: there was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible.
I could not give away the rest of his shoes.
I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return.
The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought.
I have still not tried to determine (say, by giving away the shoes) if the thought has lost its power.
I loved Vin like he was a part of me, and he loved me like a stick of gum. He’d spat me out when the flavor went, unwrapped another, and stuffed it in, and not just anyone, but Stella Yearwood.
That’s the problem with boys: They tend to help you only ’cause they fancy you, but there’s no embarrassing way to find out their real motives till it’s too late.
“What if … what if heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you’re dying of thirst, or when someone’s nice to you for no reason, or …” Mam’s pancakes with Mars Bar sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me. “Sleep tight don’t let the bed bugs bite”; or Jacko and Sharon singing “For She’s a Squishy Marshmallow” instead of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” for every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it’s not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. “S’pose heaven’s not like a painting that’s just hanging there forever, but more like … like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you’re alive, from passing cars, or … upstairs windows when you’re lost…”
Love’s pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.
“Now, what can I do for you sweetheart?”
“Not calling me ‘sweetheart’ would be a good start.”
Life’s a matter of Who Dares Wins.
Gratitude is easy. In fact, it’s so easy, one wonders how a billion-dollar self-help industry can ruthlessly support itself by continually selling “secrets” to gratitude – from journals to meditation. Here, I’ll give the ultimate “secret” away for free: if you covet gratitude, enter a state of deprivation. That’s it, that’s all. Want to appreciate tiresome home-cooked meals? Fast for a few days. Want to adore the jogs your therapist firmly suggested? Break your leg and suffer through immobility for 6-8 weeks. And on and on. The examples are endless. The truth is undeniable. For those last remaining skeptics, the ones tempted to spend $19.95 on that new book Kendall Jenner blurbed with, “I must have bought 15 of these books and gave them out to people!!! I believe this book might have saved my life,” just stick ‘em in quarantine and they’ll swiftly fall in line.
- Rarely, if ever, offer your own ideas
- Aggressively point out mistakes the powerful make
- The powerful may only be wrong a small percentage of the time, but given the demands of their position, so much material will be pumped out that even a small error rate is enough to feast on
- If you are wrong, bunker with the logic of I’m no worse than the powerful