Loving What Refuses To Be Mastered, Prepared Souls, A Dog Video and More
Friday, August 11, 2023
Happy Friday everyone!
Here are 10 things I found interesting from the last week or so.
Loving What Refuses to be Mastered
To kick off this week’s newsletter, I want to share a quote from the book I’ve been reading lately: We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin.
In the book, D-503, the dystopian novel’s protagonist, someone who adheres to all rules of One State, quickly becomes seduced by the other main character, I-303, someone who drinks, smokes, and pays little attention to any of One State’s regulations.
In Record (Chapter) 13, D-503 tells I-330 how he hates the fog, and he’s afraid of it. She responds by saying,
“That means you love it. You’re afraid of it because it’s stronger than you, you hate it because you’re afraid of it, you love it because you can’t master it. You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.”
I believe this applies to many aspects of life: we love what we can’t master. Why? Mastered means perfection. Perfection means stopping. Stopping means the end. It makes me think perhaps we don’t really want perfection then. We actually want something that can be loved forever.
Ceaselessly Striving
Subsequent to I-330’s philosophy on love and mastery, I’ll add a quote by American author Jame Lee Burke that builds on her thoughts:
“Writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover’s quarrel with the world. It’s ongoing.”
It feels like Zamyatin, Burke, and Frost are all intersecting on this same idea—that ongoing work can be worth it. As Paul Kalanithi writes in his amazing memoir When Breath Becomes Air,
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
It seems then that ceaselessly striving to love what refuses to be mastered can carry a lot of meaning in our lives.
Prepared Souls
Striving for anything—especially something you know you will never fully conquer—requires a lot from anyone. Meticulous preparation. Showing up. Sprinting unknown distances. Yet, at the frontier, inspiration, the Muse, whatever you want to call it, is always there waiting for you. Judd Apathow, director of multiple classic comedies like Knocked Up and The 40-year-old Virgin, was on Rich Roll's podcast recently. Apathow explained how fellow writer, David Milch, had a huge influence on him. Milch used to tell him,
"Inspiration comes to prepared souls."
You see a legendary filmmaker like Apathow write, produce, and direct high-quality work on an ongoing basis—i.e., ceaselessly striving—and you can't help but wonder what his secret is for staying inspired decade after decade, and then he just gives it to you: be prepared. Therefore, being prepared must be a kind of form of love. You can't reach perfection, but you can always do your best to be prepared. Inspiration then can feed on preparation. Milch's wisdom for Apathow makes me think of a quote I love by Somerset Maugham where someone asked him about how inspiration influences his writing schedule, and he replied:
"I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp."
Routines to Rituals
Being prepared really boils down to having a routine. Knowing what you need to do and when you need to do it is powerful. That sense of power that a schedule offers can compound across time. As Ryan Holiday wrote in his book, “Stillness is the Key,”
“Routine, done for long enough and done sincerely enough, becomes more than routine. It becomes ritual—it becomes sanctified and holy.”
In other words, if you keep doing your best to stay prepared, show up and trust the process, you still won’t reach perfection. However, there’s still a possibility of reaching previously unimaginable heights in the long run.
You Gotta Have Outlets, Too
Routines, rituals, regimens—these are all good. However, having outlets is good too. Here’s an article I wrote a few years ago about this very topic: You Gotta Have Outlets.
Just Being
A key component of having outlets is creating solitude. Last week I wrote about how we fear taking certain actions. I believe there’s a second part of that: fearing inaction. Not striving. Not following your routine exactly. Not escaping to your outlets. But, being is just as important as doing. As Albert Camus once said,
“Don’t be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breath. And you need to be.”
What is Already There
“All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal famously said, “stems from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I’ve heard this quote from Pascal so many times, but it wasn’t until this week that I found another quote by Henry Miller that I think builds on Pascal’s famous words. Miller said,
“Every man, when he gets quiet, when becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.”
Perhaps, by just being, we can discover what’s been there the whole time.
Taking It All In
I came across two pictures this week posted by Pat Mcafee on IG that I think capture this idea of just being and taking it all in or what Mcafee says in the photo’s caption, “Life is to be lived.”
The first is from a couple of weeks ago. It’s David Beckham watching Lionel Messi take the field for the first time with Inter Miami FC.
And the second is from a while ago. It’s Nike founder Phil Knight witnessing Lebron James break the NBA’s All-Time Scoring Record previously held for 39 years by Kareem Abdul Jabbar.
A Dog Video for Good Measure
While we’re at it, let’s add a dog video because why not?
Are You Here?
To end this week’s newsletter, I want to share a video featuring NYU Marketing Professor Scott Galloway at Summit At Sea 2023. The whole video is quite interesting, but I would argue that the best part is the last four minutes of his presentation, where he talks about regret. Beyond preparing and striving, routines and outlets, or just taking it all in, Galloway asks us a simple question worth pondering: "Are you here?”
Enjoy the weekend and see you next Friday.
-Garrett
Great articles, thank you!