The Levers of the Soul

you are a self-modifying machine, a particle with partial control over its own future, and it pays to know what all the buttons do. I’ve heard many people describe to me what sound like levers in their own souls, but I know very few people who realize that they can pull on them deliberately, if they want to.

The mismatch between past and present doesn’t seem trivial to me — if the “you” of today can so blithely disregard the “you” of yesterday, then it follows that the “you” I’m talking to now might very well not be the one who shows up for our date tomorrow. There’s a kind of unpredictable change that seems to lie outside of the virtues of growth and ... See more

The key insight is that these levers actually make a difference in the way I move through the world. They’re truly levers , in that they provide the Platonic me with mechanical advantage over my larger, messier self.

Some of the levers are names, some of them are stories, some of them are simply pictures or feelings, with no words attached. They are happy and sad, inspirational and cautionary, meaningful and trivial, but they all have one thing in common — each and every one of them has the power to move me…I mean things which can move me — which can impart mom... See more