everything is a conversation

notes on being in constructive dialogue with reality, instead of staying mired in delusional rigidity

This line from David Foster Wallace still haunts me:

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?”

And he’ll

Tommy Dixon on Substack

as far as I can tell, everyone is given different values to live by. Different questions to live into. Different gods who live in their chest. Different combinations of natural concerns that balance out very differently.

River Kenna • Destabilization & the Frequency of Values

Tired: Rushing to quick answers or public declarations Wired: Sitting with questions, refining them in trusted company, and waiting until the shape of truth emerges

Yancey Strickler x.com

We are very fluent in blunt, materialistic, capitalist questions: What? How soon? How much? What I hope that we can learn to do is add questions of moral imagination to that mix: questions like “Why?” and “To what human effect?” and “How much is enough?”

The On Being Project • Living the Questions

if your work is solely driven by how people respond to it, you’ll create something popular but soulless

if it’s driven by how you feel about it, you’ll create something potent but obscure

but if your work is a dialogue between self & world, it can be both resonant & true

scott 🌞 • Tweet

We’re in a weird era for startups where perception has become the moat. Raise early, get labeled a “category leader,” and that perception attracts capital, customers, and talent until it’s no longer perception. The irony is many kings were crowned long before they’d earned it.

Hadley x.com

The more you cling to certainty, the more identity rules your life.

Brett Kistler • Tweet

“But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.”

-Haruki Murakami