This is a newsletter where you get three mind-boggling ideas that help you become a better person, every Saturday.
And these insights don’t come from random “mind-boggling quotes” searches on the Web, mind you, but from (mostly) books, podcasts, articles, videos. And I share only what I find revelatory. So, please share with your loved ones, if you find this stuff valuable.
Here are this week’s insights:
1. That’s not bad either!
The chief thing, then, to practice and pursue is the attitude exemplified by the man whose stone missed his dog and hit his stepmother: ‘That’s not bad either!’ he said. It is possible to change opportunities so that they are no longer unwelcome. ...
Why can’t the rest of us behave in the same way? Have you failed to capture some public position you were after? You can live in the country, minding your own business. Have you been spurned while courting the affection of someone in authority? You can now live a life free of risk and bother. ... Are you faced with misery and insults because lies or malicious tales are being spread about you? This is a following wind, blowing you towards the Muses and the Acadamy...
There isn’t an opportunity within every adversity, but every adversity is itself an opportunity. Greatness is achieved not in spite of difficulties, but because of them. Otherwise, Hercules would be a hero even without the Labours.
2. The necessary evil
One-thousand or two-thousand words every day for the next twenty years. At the start, you might shoot for one short story a week, fifty-two stories a year, for five years. You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done.
Ray Bradbury is advising this to novice writers. But it works for all people.
The point is, eventually quantity makes for quality.
The more you practice the better you get. You cannot create quality without knowing how to, which you cannot know without practice.
So, practice is the necessary evil. You have to produce a lot of shitty work to learn to create quality work. And since you must produce bad stuff, ‘you might as well start now and get the necessary work done,’ asap.
3. The enemy of all art
For only after, can one nail down, examine, explain.
To try to know beforehand is to freeze and kill.
Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.
Kierkegaard’s honest opinion and friendly advice was this: ‘do it or do not do it—you will regret both.’ Since you will regret both, why not regret doing it, rather than not doing it?
You can’t know the outcome of things, no matter how probable (or improbable) they seem. So, when you want to try something, but doubt it may not work out, try it still. Don’t think, what if it doesn’t? Instead, what if it does?
‘Dance first. Think later,’ Beckett said. ‘It’s the natural order.’
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