[Antifragile 4 🔥] a reminder on love ❤️, J.K. Rowling & Epictetus on blame 🧙🏻, rabbit hole on joy thieves 🐰, a reflection on boredom 🍃🐜
#57: a weekly 4-item newsletter created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind.
Welcome to the 57th edition of the antifragile 4 🔥.
Back to school. Back to school.
Our oldest started his new preschool in Denver this week. Nerves, excitement…and relief at not having to account for him 7 days/week 😅.
I love my children dearly. But God bless childcare.
It lets me be my best dad self.
We all need breaks. Dads, moms, anyone running point on these little rugrats.
Because they’re a lot sometimes (all the time?)
It’s certainly a balance. These days will go by fast (as I’ve heard from those whose kids are leaving for college this week).
But having some space is utterly essential for me.
It makes together time even more special.
With love,
Chris
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Here’s this week’s antifragile 4 🔥:
a reminder ❤️ on love
J.K. Rowling & Epictetus 🧙🏻🏛️ on blame & responsibility
a rabbit hole 🐰 on joy thieves through the years
a reflection 🍃🐜 on boredom
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1.) a reminder ❤️ on love
Love is a verb, not a noun.
Regardless of anything else, you can decide to love. Someone, something. Right now.
And if you feel as if love has faded in a corner your life where it once shone brightly, you might consider - instead of waiting for it to magically reappear - to gently offer acts of love again.
Without expectation of reciprocation. Just a one-way love street.
Because sometimes the smallest spark can ignite a fire you thought had gone out for good.
2.) J.K. Rowling & Epictetus 🧙🏻🏛️ on taking responsibility
Here’s a little shared wisdom from J.K. Rowling & Epictetus…on leaving blame at the door.
There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
J.K. Rowling, 2008 Commencement Speech at Harvard
An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.
Epictetus
3.) a rabbit hole 🐰 on joy thieves through the years
I was initially going to write a section on the quote "Comparison is the thief of joy."
Because…it is.
Social media, advertising, TV, parenting. Pretty much everything in modern life has you glancing over your shoulder and sizing yourself up against someone else.
It’s miserable. Cut it out.
…but we know this (so stop doing it!)
What was really interesting was an investigation into the quote I discovered while trying to figure out who actually coined the phrase.
(For the record, I thought it was Mark Twain, most of the internet thought it was FDR. Turns out it's unclear, but definitely neither of them.)
The investigation lists similar versions of the phrase they uncovered over the years. It’s a fascinating window into the struggles of past times:
1855: Time is a thief of joys
1881: O Age, thou art the very thief of joy
1893: “It might have been” is but a thief of joy
1915: Thief of joy, worry
1918: Anticipation is, in truth, the real thief of joy
1921: Industry is the thief of joy
1977: Debt is often a thief of joy
1989: Comparison is the death of true self-contentment (John Powell)
1992: Anxiety—that thief of joy
1998: Death, that most remorseless thief of joy and time
2003: Thief of joy is comparison (Ray Cummings)
2004: Comparison is the thief of joy (Anonymous)
Time, age, it might have been, worry, anticipation, industry, debt, anxiety, death. All still thieves in their own right.
Maybe comparison is the thief of our times.
4.) a reflection 🍃🐜 on boredom
I was absolutely transfixed.
My heart was racing, jaw agape, eyes wide.
It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen.
I couldn't pull my eyes away.
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What was this gripping scene you ask?
It was an ant crawling across a leaf. The underside of a leaf, to be exact.
I was on Day 8 of a 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat I attended in Thailand with my wife back in 2015. In the last 180 hours I had uttered one sentence and made exactly zero eye contact with another human being.
There were no phones, no books, no TVs, no radios, no nothing.
Just you, your thoughts and 11 hours of meditation a day.
To say that I was bored would qualify for understatement of the decade.
What was magical was how this boredom transformed a scene I would not have paid a millisecond of attention to in almost any other time in my life, to one of the most engrossing experiences I've ever had.
It was something real. Without agenda. Something untouched. Something worthy of true awe.
Clearly a core memory.
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It's been nearly 10 years since I saw that leaf and that ant. And they popped into my head the other day.
It got me thinking about how I haven't been even remotely close to that bored since that retreat.
How could I possibly be bored when I have the greatest entertainment device in the known universe sitting next to my left testicle at all times?
But what is the cost of this lack of boredom? This entertainment?
Am I constantly feeding my brain with the empty calories of digital entertainment while the whole foods of reality crawl unnoticed on the leaves strewn about my feet?
This is what I'm thinking about a lot these days.
Two last things for you this week:
Find an extra moment to be bored this week. Try to notice something real.
Be fire and wish for the wind 🔥
With love,
Chris
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