A Good Life

soft ambition is about playing the long game without losing yourself in the process. it’s about wanting success, but on your own terms—without sacrificing your sanity, health, or joy along the way. it’s ambition without the sharp edges.

The Keatsian endeavor has never been popular, but is particularly unfashionable today. Religious fundamentalists reject it on the grounds that revelation and commitment are needed to orient oneself in the world. The amorality of a poet who is a “thoroughfare for all thoughts” risks heresy or destabilization. Tell me where you stand, where your... See more

The dream of a Liberal (arts) education—which is the scaled, democratic form of the Keatsian ideal of negative capability—cannot hold up when liberalism itself is held to be suspect.

many of us traded in a good life for an efficient life. we must acknowledge the pendulum has swung too far towards efficiency.

An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company.