Ideas I'll remember from Agnes Callard - Aspiration

Suppose that you sign up for a classical-music-appreciation class, in which your first assignment is to listen to a symphony. You put on headphones, press Play-and fall asleep. The problem is that you don't actually want to listen to classical music; you just want to want to. Aspiring, Callard thinks, is a common human activity: there are aspiring ... See more

There's something uncomfortable about people who are trying too hard. We judge them for their pretensions; we feel embarrassed at the nakedness of their effort. The embarrassment is often a projection of our own insecurities about striving. If we managed, with heroic unselfconsciousness, to really commit to becoming a writer, an artist, a better pe... See more