#110: The trick of the epiphany

. Personal epiphanies feel great, but they fade within weeks. Upon having an epiphany, make a plan and start actually changing behavior.

The mind, if preoccupied with a problem or question long enough, will tend to come up with possibilities that might eventually lead to answers, but at this stage are still speculations, untested hypotheses, and early epiphanies. (Epiphanies often are characterized as “Aha! moments,” but that suggests the problem has been solved in a flash. More of

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Often, we avoid complexity and instead collapse all of our uncertainty into a neat ideology that claims to explain everything. But if we resist that urge and instead lean into it, it can bring us into a state of epistemic humility. We realise just how much we don’t know, and how hard these problems are to solve. And in that acceptance, we often fin... See more

But here’s what we do know as we age: we come to realise that ‘out there’ is not a place in the world- it is a place in our heads. It’s an emotional state of mind that requires risk, vulnerability and the timid hope that what you dream of doing might just be of value to the world. Those are hard things to reconcile as you get older. Risk can seem f... See more

In recent years, I've begun to suspect that a life consumed by ideas will not bring me closer to the divine. The freedom I seek, it seems, doesn't lie in my laying about, steeped in my own brain, but rather in the stillness I've found in the more mundane moments of my life. In these moments, there is no euphoria, nor even any active reflection on g... See more

Often, there’s a desire to cling onto how we thought life should go, sometimes until it outweighs the reality of how it is going — what makes us happy, versus what we feel should; what is truly stimulating or fulfilling, versus what we’ve been told should be chased and sacrificed for. A question I ponder is: How do we untether ourselves from the pe... See more

That said, I find myself in a season of my life where I am no longer seeking what is 'big and loud'. I'm not interested in trends, virality, job promotions, or epiphanies. Instead, I'm looking for what is timeless, what remains under-appreciated, and what is quietly profound. I'm seeking opportunities to nurture what's important to me, improve the ... See more