start again today no. 38: sharing joy, the long now, look, say it out loud π£
Hey ππ½,
When do we stop doing rollercoaster arms?
I wondered while watching 40 fingertips reach for the sky from the back of the boat.
Greggβs brown arms were extended out not up, steering through the choppy wake of a bigger boat in front of us.
Woohoooooo!
As we become more ourselves, are we set free of the need to signal to people around us that weβre having a good time? Or at some point, do we learn that feelings - fear, hope, enthusiasm - are not sexy, public things?
A thick grey haze hung in the sky behind us, clear blue smiled above us but for a minute in the in between fat raindrops came down.
We hit a bump and 8 red and brown limbs reached for the sun.
Woohooo!
Maybe the youthful arm throwing is ideal, never growing too mature or whatever to let our wings flap around a little.
Or maybe the focus just...shifts. Time and experience and connections bring our arms down to Earth. The focus becomes creating experiences for other people that letβs them throw their hands in the air and wave them like, well, you know.
4 faces turned toward us, smiling.
Maybe we never lose rollercoaster arms. We just pass them on.
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π§ 6 ways to think longterm Long Now, 12m
Last week I shared 80,000 Hours take on longtermism. The Long Now offers 6 actionable ways to win the struggle against short termism:
deep humility
legacy mindset
intergenerational justice
cathedral thinking
holistic forecasting
transcendental goal setting
in an attempt to answer the question:
How can we be good ancestors?
β€οΈ the art of fiction no. 78 the Paris Review, 39m
I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, βLook.β I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, βLook again,β which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I canβt explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once youβve had that experience, you see differently. - James Baldwin
πΆπ½ββοΈsay it out loud/make it common knowledge Scott aaronson, 24m
βThe mere act of saying something publicly can change the worldβeven if everything you said was already obvious to every last one of your listeners.β
I see you, I love you, have a great a week ahead,
H