start again today no. 38: sharing joy, the long now, look, say it out loud πŸ—£

Hey πŸ‘‹πŸ½,

When do we stop doing rollercoaster arms?

I wondered while watching 40 fingertips reach for the sky from the back of the boat.

Gregg’s 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 we’re 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 let’s 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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🧠 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?

❀️ 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, β€œLook.” I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, β€œLook again,” 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 can’t 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 you’ve had that experience, you see differently. - James Baldwin

πŸšΆπŸ½β€β™€οΈsay it out loud/make it common knowledge Scott aaronson, 24m

β€œThe mere act of saying something publicly can change the worldβ€”even if everything you said was already obvious to every last one of your listeners.”


I see you, I love you, have a great a week ahead,

H