Experience Is Incompressible

Almost everything that holds meaning, weight, and gravity, cannot be reached by a shortcut, by sheer force alone. But by acceptance. Acceptance that what you desire for can survive contact with the world, and will yield meaning. You have to devote the time it takes to inhabit the world, chip away at its interior. No one can break the shell for you!

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Many concepts can be explained concisely, in simple language, and we should all strive for clarity. But the aphorism is a mistake, for a number of thoughts approximate the carpenter’s craft, and to meaningfully reveal them requires time and attention. Sometimes these cannot simply be told to another at all, they must be grown. For a topical example... See more

My countervailing advice to people trying to understand something is: go slow. Read slowly, think slowly, really spend time pondering the thing. Start by thinking about the question yourself before reading a bunch of stuff about it. A week or a month of continuous pondering about a question will get you surprisingly far.

real wisdom is usually not frictionless. It’s hard to seek out, hard to understand, and something that reveals itself in time. However, if you do have a habit of getting cozy with this type of content, you’re not alone. Three things that will change your life, though:

1. Wrestle with ideas before saving them for later


2. If an idea is truly indispensable,

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“Why is this so hard? Because you’re utterly habituated to steady progress—to completing things, to producing, to solving. When progress is subtle or slow, when there’s no clear way to proceed, you flinch away. You redirect your attention to something safer, to something you  can  do. You jump to implementation prematurely; you feel a co

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