Sublime

“an individual person has a set of desires, concerns or, as I shall call them, projects, which help to constitute a character”; these “ground projects [provide] the motive force which propels him into the future, and gives him a reason for living.”

You know, we all have a much broader set of purposes in our life and this ties more closely to the Aristotelian philosophy of eudaimonia, of human flourishing, of the idea of the good life as having multiple dimensions to it, including social connections, purpose, being able to contribute to society, dignity, respect, not the narrow Benthamite, uti

To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs.

Uncertainty abounds. In many instances, we don’t know what we’ll want in the future. In fact, recent research goes even further and suggests that we don’t know who we’ll be in the future.

when it comes to well-being, projects can trump traits.

the non-Essentialist is always reacting to crises rather than anticipating them, he is forced to apply quick-fix solutions: the equivalent to plugging his finger into the hole of a leaking dam and hoping the whole thing doesn’t burst.

To think, to dig into the foundations of our beliefs, is a risk, and perhaps a tragic risk. There are no guarantees that it will make us happy or even give us satisfaction.

Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, “What do I have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?”

The indefinite pessimist can’t know whether the inevitable decline will be fast or slow, catastrophic or gradual. All he can do is wait for it to happen, so he might as well eat, drink, and be merry in the meantime: hence Europe’s famous vacation mania.