The Antidote To Abstraction

All kids want their mama. And for good reason. Mamas are the best. It’s no contest. Of course, that doesn’t take anything away from fathers’ impacts. And if we sum the total hours fathers spend with their children I’ll bet it’s less time than they spend with mom. So in the spirit of a father’s impact-per-hour, I’ll be brief.

Read Charles Eisenstein’s essay The Age Of We Need Each Other (Link) (Link with my highlights)

It’s one of the best things I’ve read in a long time. I suspect different people will get different things out of it. I’ll share my own reading of it:

Its message is the antidote to all the abstraction that makes us feel helpless. If all the top-down strife is leading to daily bottoms-up anxiety this essay has a remedy.

It reminds me of the advice to break giant problems or endeavors into manageable bites. Except the giant problem is not “making a living” or “getting healthy”. It’s finding the purpose of your life. Sometimes we just don’t know what we are “supposed” to do right now. I think the answer lies right here in this essay. It affirms a timeless truth. A truth so simple it’s easy to forget:

You are, can be, or will be somebody’s world. It might just be one person. And that is not just enough. It’s everything.

Most of the people I consider heroes are people I personally know. They are unsung. And this becomes more true as I get older. I think that truth is a clue to what you are “supposed” to do.

Anyway, read the essay yourself. See what you get.

In a similar vein, I’ll share the Michael Crichton quote I keep on my main Notion dashboard.

If you want to be happy, forget yourself. Forget all of it — how you look, how you feel, how your career is going. Just drop the whole subject of you.

The quote continues.

We all know this is true because…

If you want to know how the whole essay goes check out Happiness. (Link)

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