Commitment

Wendell Berry wrote: there are two muses — the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought."

my little life of optionality—my malleable, absorbent dunnage which lessens the shock of surprises, avoids pain and prevents breakage. No commitments, nobody counting on me, no one to disappoint and no one to disappoint me. Still, if life becomes intolerable—a measure which is lowered with each available treatment, each magical distraction—I have... See more

I’m thinking about conviction, because it is so rare.

A lot of people start off with conviction, but life, hardships, and other people’s opinions get in the way, and they stop believing in the greatness of their own ideas.

I’ve met intelligent types with lots of skills and advantages at their disposal. But they usually don’t know where to go with... See more

our ability to bind our future selves to a future is what makes us agentic, rather than just moment-to-moment responders. Maybe the total inability to commit is a deeper kind of temporal fragmentation—the self splintering into a thousand disconnected moments instead of flowing through time as a continuous “I”. It’s fascinating to turn this idea... See more