If you like this piece, feel free to 💬,❤️ or 🔄 on Substack so more people can find it!
Happy Tuesday. Each week I share some thought-provoking insights of my own, along with wisdom from the great thinkers I've encountered through books, other media, and my network.
Top of Mind: Defining Adulthood
A definition of adulthood I’ve been playing around with: adulthood is when the things you never thought would happen to you, happen to you.
I see this as a continuous shift from theoretical to lived wisdom, both through my own life and through what I see in others and the world.
There are a lot of things that are hard to fathom when you're younger, that only make sense once you, or the people in your life, find yourselves in certain scenarios.
Big Idea: Great things are often simple but tough to replicate
A lot of the greatness we experience in life is simple, but not easy. The idea of pursuing a craft or way of being that is simple but tough to replicate is something worth striving for.
A few examples come to mind:
Erling Haaland’s regimen for peak performance is fairly simple: a healthy diet, good sleep and intense exercise. When you watch Erling Haaland on an exercise bike say “Do I want to do this? No, I don’t. Will I do it? Yeah. Am I doing it? Yeah. Because why not? ... It’s good for my body, it’s good for my mind”, it’s easy to understand the role of this mindset through the greatness, but it’s still hard to do consistently.
The other day, my girlfriend and I were at Bufalina in Austin. They have a fantastic cavatelli, and they tell you, right on the menu, what’s in it: heirloom tomato, ricotta salata, tomato water. Even though we know the ingredients, and they’re incredibly simple, it’s hard to go home and recreate the dish.
The founder of the clothing brand Husbands, Nicolas Gabard, talks about craft and imitation on the Throwing Fits podcast (minute 46): "you can copy the result, but you cannot copy the process." It took him years to get the button placement right on a double-breasted jacket, and he points out that anyone could put the button in the same spot, but they still won't understand why it goes there. That's what makes the difference.
Finally, there’s Picasso’s Le Taureau, in which, over the course of a month, he distilled a bull into its purest, simplest form. Fernand Mourlot, the master printer who worked with him on the series, commented that “in order to achieve his pure and linear rendering of the bull, he had to pass through all of the intermediary stages.”
As I think about the throughline across these examples, I think back to when I interviewed James Kerr, author of Legacy: What The All Blacks Can Teach Us About The Business Of Life, he talked about the countercultural nature of success:
“Success is countercultural. Not doing what everybody is doing is a pretty good way to be outstanding. Literally you stand out.”
In many cases, the things that make the difference are the easy things: easy to do, and easy not to do.
Borrowed Wisdom: Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-American rabbi known for his profound writings on mysticism and marching alongside Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement. As far as I understand it, this guy was really wise, and really felt the spirit. To give you a sense, he’s the one who said, after marching with MLK at Selma, that he felt “his legs were praying”, and one of the main biographies about him is titled A Life of Radical Amazement.
Here are a few ideas from Heschel that have stuck with me and stand on their own, no commentary necessary (some are honest paraphrases from my notes):
Wonder: “The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. Wonder precedes wisdom.”
Creativity: “The creative man is he who succeeds in capturing the exceptional and instantaneous before it becomes stagnant in his mind.”
Freedom: “Freedom does not mean the right to live as we please, it means the power to live spiritually, to transcend our nature and rise to a higher level of existence.”
Faith: “One must take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought. We are asked to surpass our own needs, to do more than what we understand, in order to understand more than we do.”
Reading, Watching, Listening:
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel. I was excited to come across this book, and surprised I'd never heard of it. It's a series of stories about the enduring nature of the human experience. I found it timely given where the country is right now. With AI reshaping the job market, it feels like things are going to be permanently changed. Housel's concepts have been an important reminder and a welcome recentering, anchored in a longer time horizon.
Let me know if anything stands out. Hope you have a great week.
Adam
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.