Getting better at being human
Last week I had a friend for dinner, and she convinced me to do one of her favorite activities afterward: lie on the grass in the park and look at the sky. I was hesitant because I don’t like to lie down until nighttime, when the only goal is to end the day by losing consciousness. (My friend loves lying […]
Here’s an experiment for a true daredevil. Sit there for a three minutes, following two rules: By “don’t do anything,” I mean don’t move, don’t fidget, don’t indulge any thoughts or daydreams. You’re allowed to breathe, and blink. By “be content,” I mean be completely okay with your experience of doing nothing. Don’t try to change anything, and don’t get […]
When you die, you appear before a studio audience and they give you a standing ovation. The host then interviews you about your great successes and misses in life. One thing you realize, when they review the footage, is that you didn’t really try most of the time. You thought you had tried and failed to learn a second language, […]
I’m pretty sure the best answer to every problem can be encapsulated in one simple dictum. You can use this dictum to meet all your problems, regardless of what they are, and create the best possible outcomes. You’re not going to like it. It has different forms, but here’s one: Do what has to be done, when it has to […]
The night before you travel somewhere, order your favorite pizza, eat some of it for dinner, and seal the rest in a bag and put it in the freezer. A week later, when you get home unexpectedly late, wiped out and ravenous, you’ll open your fridge to find only eggs, pickles, and condiments. Then, you’ll remember that your favorite pizza […]
I keep reading books from the 19th century and earlier, fiction and nonfiction, because I envy something about the lives of the people in them. I don’t think I’d want to trade places. I’m too accustomed to hot showers and modern dentistry. But people back then seemed to live with a certain straightforwardness we no longer have. They could more […]
I’m obsessed with the idea that a guy who wears jeans and drives a Jeep today is basically the same creature that wore animal skins and lived on hand-caught river fish 20,000 years ago. Those beings had the same basic physical and emotional needs, but had to meet them with very few tools and amenities. I’ve previously described my favorite […]
I remember a surreal moment about twenty years ago, which felt like the beginning of something bad, and it was. I was at a bowling alley with some friends, and a few people in our group were talking about Facebook. I knew what it was but had no interest in it. Then one of them turned to me and said, […]
The human being is an enjoyment-seeking creature. There’s a reason people are always trying to restrain themselves from excessive eating, drinking, scrolling, and shopping. It’s perfectly normal to pursue these and other pleasures even to the point of serious problems and early death. Even though we are born enjoyment-mongers, we tend to overlook the greatest and most reliable source of […]
There should be a German compound word for the emotion you feel when you encounter a famous thing and realize you’d never actually seen it until that moment. (Ikonerwachen?) I had seen a thousand images of the Sydney Opera House before my gaze landed on it unexpectedly as I was crossing the harbour bridge in 2010. I knew its iconic […]