how to change your life, part 2: agnes callard's aspiration

If you think seriously about the good life and pursue it, you will probably fail in ways large and small. But an imperfect struggle to live well and love a world badly in need of repair is better than staying still because things are terrible, because you might look like a loser in the meritocratic game, because it’s easier.

Last night, I slipped back into that belief myself now and then. But then I thought: “All of these doubts are accurate but they’re also an illusion. Because I am the same as Dostoyevsky and I’m the same as every lost person who writes to me and I’m the same as every stranger on the planet. I have to start, that’s all. I have to get up early and try... See more

Be ambitious about the process, not just the outcome. (To use my own hobby as an example, when I bake, I put on some good music, I take my time, I eat too much batter. That way, if the recipe implodes–like when I accidentally mixed up powdered sugar and flour–the whole thing isn’t a wash.)

Let more than one thing hold your ambition, or meaning. (Th... See more

The work is visible in her struggles to sustain interest in the hobby or relationship or career or religion or aesthetic experience that will later become second nature; in her repeated attempts to "get it right," attempts that must be performed without the benefit of knowing exactly what rightness consists in; and, most generally, in the fact that... See more