Musings on committing and continually showing up to a place, a profession, or a person in an age of endless opportunities + persevering - even and especially when it's hard.
I meet a lot of people searching for something (career, relationship, etc). And yet, when it’s put in front of them, they won’t pursue it because they fear pain (getting hurt, failure, etc.). So they unconsciously (and expensively) trade self protection for misery.
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."
I think obsessiveness is necessary for deep thinking. You have to stay with a vague sense for long enough that more and more of your mind is recruited for figuring it out. And then it's sort of like fishing: a waiting game. You need patience and persistence to catch the big one
This is what nobody tells you: commitment is an act of agency . We often get through life comforted by the thought that we have the ability to make choices, theoretically . But there's a peculiar magic that happens when you actually exercise that choice: the world shifts on its axis. You make active choices about how to use your time, energy, and... See more