2023 Annual Letter

I, like many people I know, ended up sick for the majority of this Christmas season1. I'm just now starting to recover, though, it's slow going. Being ill at a time reserved for gratitude for the past year, reflection on what matters most, and optimism for what lies ahead is a humbling experience. As has been said “A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.”2

A little humility though is no bad thing. Every day we are surrounded by a wide array of tasks, pleasures, and problems. All these goings on can be equal parts fun or stressful, as the case may have it. Yet no matter they almost invariably manage to fit snugly within our standard frame. We easily assign them to views we already hold about what is good, what is bad, how to be happy, how to ‘win’. They become part of the water we swim in. When one is humbled it creates the space to look at the world afresh. An opportunity to be graced with a new view.

From this angle humility is a kind of deference. Rather than relating to the world based on our views, and our experiences, humility gives us a chance to defer to the world as it appears in itself. Rather than imposing our map we defer to the territory in front of us.

Such a posture is a source of insight and strength. Insight because through deferring to something beyond ourselves we gain access to new ways of seeing the world. Strength because the recognition of our weakness allows us to understand what we are capable of. Such an understanding in turn brings control. Meekness, the state of being humble, is the translation in the Bible for the Greek word "praus”, which literally means to be tame. Strength under control.

My illness also made me think a lot about courage. When I am ill, more than at any other time, I am likely to give in to the voice of discouragement: “I'm too tired to write anything.”, “I shouldn't read that book. I’m sick. Let’s just watch TV instead.”, “I’ll get back to my friends when I’m feeling better3.”, “Prayer would be too hard right now, I'll wait until I'm healthy.”.

Of course, part of this is because it’s true. When you're sick you really do need to rest and let go of your normal routine to some degree. Yet it is also a convenient excuse. Being sick is scary and difficult. You are in pain and you have lost at least some of your normal control of your body. You may suspect you will recover, but you don't know when or even if you will for sure. It is in these circumstances, when the future is uncertain and you are unsure of your own ability to meet what it has to bring, that courage is most necessary. Sickness is a testing ground for the spirit. An opportunity to boldly meet a challenge that lies at, or beyond, the edge of one's competence.

At first these two virtues, humility and courage, seem at odds but I think they are in fact close bedfellows. They are two sides of the same coin.

One way to illustrate this is through thinking about the strange dual origin of the Western tradition in Athens and Jerusalem. For Aristotle, in Athens, courage was the queen of the virtues. Courage gave you the fortitude to pursue everything else. For the Christian gloss on the Jewish tradition, born out of Jerusalem, humility played a similar role4. Without the appropriate deference to God implied in humility one would could never be properly oriented in every other regard.

This admixture is perhaps why for most of its history that tradition has been so adamant about the importance of faith - the middle way between the humility to defer to what is and the courage to pursue what one must.

This year I didn't make any public goals I still however had a number of private ambitions. I can’t concretely point to some landmark accomplishment that I achieved but I can say that I made progress.

The most important personal calling for me was continuing on a journey towards Mandarin fluency. I’m sure I’ll write more about it in future but for now suffice to say I studied Mandarin in university though I never made it very far towards fluent conversation, reading, or writing. This year I decided that I was going to change that and give it my best shot to pick the language up properly.

It felt like I spent the first 6 months of this endeavour floundering. I followed the learning methods that I had practiced in university and ended up mostly banging my head against the wall. About halfway through the year though I discovered ideas around 'comprehensible input’ and learning through imitating the process that a child follows. I suddenly started to make progress. I'm still far away from my goals and the better I get the higher my goals become but it does feel like I'm finally moving in the right direction. More to come this year.

It's also not quite true that I didn't make any public goals. I thought that was the case until I was preparing for this letter and I came across this line from last year's letter:

This year, I’ll send out an essay with a set of interesting links every Saturday morning Eastern time.

As evidenced above I have ‘committed’ to writing here in 2021 and 2022 without the best results but with any luck the third time’s the charm. I know better now than I did then what a real commitment looks like. So, I believe I can stick with this.

That's embarrassing. Somewhere along the way I simply forgot what I had said and stopped posting on a weekly basis. Despite this though it was still a good year. I maintained a pretty regular stream of essays:

In total 22 essays or ~4 per quarter.

I was also happy with the quality I was able to put out. I’m particularly proud of three essays: The City On the Hill, Skill is a Prerequisite to the Good Life, and The Transformative Power of Tragedy. These may be the best bits of writing I've ever published.

The most popular was Skill is a Prerequisite to the Good Life but I might be most proud of the writing in The Transformative Power of Tragedy. If measured by the number of people who were compelled to reach out after reading it it certainly won the grand prize.

The Transformative Power of Tragedy

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December 3, 2023

In 2006 Rudolf Vrba died in a Vancouver hospital at the age of 81. He was survived by his wife, his daughter, and two grandchildren. Over the course of his life Vrba had been a Slovakian, Israeli, British, and Canadian citizen. He had found success as a research fellow at Harvard Medical school and published over 50 papers while working as a professor o…

I was also thrilled this year to get to travel to both Singapore and Hong Kong.

Travelogue 🇸🇬 🇭🇰

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July 15, 2023

You may have noticed took a hiatus from posts for the last couple months. At the beginning of May I picked up an 8 week old, fresh, puppy named Daisy. It’s been a lot of work which hopefully can explain the absence of material. However, I can say it’s been well worth it. She is a delightful companion with a wonderful personality and it is a joy to have …

The trip had been a dream of mine for a while and I think about both cities often as part of trying to understand the world, where it's going, and where it should be going. Seeing both places in person for the first time taught me a lot, while also simply being a ton of fun.

Lastly, this year, I took on responsibility for Daisy a chocolate lab. She has already grown to be a wonderful companion. I look forward to many more years together:

I've made a commitment to post essays here on a regular schedule for three years in a row and failed to do so every time. So, today I'm figuratively throwing in the towel on that aim.

At points in the past I've dabbled with the idea that I might want to convert this newsletter into a paid subscription. To do that some kind of regular content would be essential. Instead though I can now see that the most important thing for me here is to just keep writing about the topics I'm most interested in without any specific theme or schedule. I don't think I can do justice to that aim if I have a content schedule or paid audience to think about.

Writing in a more full-time capacity and creating something worth being paid for is still a vision for me but if it happens it will not be part of this newsletter but instead some kind of separate future project.

You can still expect regular posts here in 2024. If I had to guess, based on past years, it will average out to about once a month but there will undoubtedly be slow periods and bursts of activity.

In a different vein I think it's likely that I will pick back up work on The Volition Podcast. I have no set plans but I have one interview recorded and ready to release and a couple other potential guests in the pipeline so I’m confident there is something there.

I want above all for this year to be filled with peace and optimism. The world is large and beautiful and filled with opportunity. If you’re reading this I hope that you and I have many opportunities in 2024 to participate in it to the full.

Thank you for being a subscriber. As always, if you ever have any feedback, if any of these essays spark an idea for you, or you just want to chat about something please reach out! You can send me a note to ben@benparry.ca or DM me on Twitter. I would love to hear from you.

If you’re interested, here are letters from previous years: 2022 Letter, 2021 Letter