Of what value are stories, and how do they shape our identity?
As each new year begins, I start thinking about writing a list of the things I’ve learned. “54 things I’ve learned in 54 years,” or maybe, “14 things from 14 years of blogging.” In recent years I don’t even open a document to begin typing; I have learned a few things.
Two years ago I pulled together the key messages for [TreeHouseLetter]. And I categorized more broadly what it is I write. Yet, it is beyond categorizing, because I go where I must go and write and discuss what is top of mind or inescapable.
~ Mylinh Shattan, from What I learned writing TreeHouseLetter for 10 years
I’ve learned three things: First, there are already countless such lists. Second, the Internet doesn’t need me to write another. (Thus, I should only write one if it’s meaningful to me to do so.) Third, it’s a gift to my future self to not start Yet Another Thing®. It would take me hours (days perhaps) and having then done it once, well I should totally do it again next year adding one to the count . . . And I do not want to add anything more.
No character can be simple unless it is based on truth — unless it is lived in harmony with one’s own conscience and ideals. Simplicity is the pure white light of a life lived from within. It is destroyed by any attempt to live in harmony with public opinion. Public opinion is a conscience owned by a syndicate — where the individual is merely a stockholder. But the individual has a conscience of which he is sole proprietor. Adjusting his life to his own ideals is the royal road to simplicity. Affectation is the confession of inferiority; It is an unnecessary proclamation that one is not living the life he pretends to live.
~ William G. Jordan
I’ve always liked that turn of phrase: The royal road to simplicity. It springs to mind unbidden more often than I’d care to admit. As in, “this is not the royal road to simplicity! What am I doing?!”
I once asked a successful author how to market a book. He waved me off and said, “If the book is good you don’t need to market it. If the book is bad, no amount of marketing will help.”
He was exaggerating: I think his advice is like 80% true. But it’s definitely 80% true. And it applies to almost any product. The best marketing is a good product.
~ Morgan Housel, from A Few Little Ideas And Short Stories
My blog has pretty many posts riffing from Housel’s many posts. Despite the fact that it’s really a blog by an angel investor and professes to be about finances and such… there are a lot of posts like that one. Things which make one go, *hunh*
Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
~ Howard H. Aiken
I’ve always felt that if something is going to be a success, it would be as if it were going downhill. It’d be all just sunshine, puppies and ice cream cones. It would take just a touch of effort to get my sled started sliding down the freshly snow-covered hill— …and then a bunch of frantic running trying to get into the thing. Is there a lesson there? I’m not sure, but I’m having flashbacks to countless Flexible Flyer sledding stories that somehow never involved catastrophic injury.
Even without intentional deception, people will surprise you, will shock you, will hurt you — not out of malice, but out of the incompleteness of their own self-knowledge, which continually leads them to surprise themselves. More often than not, when someone breaks a promise, it is because they believed themselves to be the kind of person who could keep it and found themselves to be a person who could not.
~ Maria Popova, from How to See More Clearly and Love More Purely
If I’m generous, the reason I’ve never written one of those lists—54 things I learned in 54 years—is that it’s just too much work. If ungenerous, then it’s because I’ve not actually learned the lessons. But honestly, what lesson is there to learn from: Caution! If you ride face down, the clever, interlocking buckle on the waist-strap of a 1970s snowmobile suit can become caught in the wooden slats of a Flexible Flyer. (Clearly a great story though.)
Based on what I know about software without deadlines, humans achieving immortality would be a disaster.
~ Jeff Atwood
As Dr. Who once said, “We’re all just stories in the end.” I think of that point—if I can remember it—when I’m in the throes of some fit of frustration. I sometimes pull myself up short thinking: If someone tuned in (how dated is that metaphor!) right here, in this part of season 54, episode 14… they would click away (also dated!) immediately.
While a great many people grow more conservative with age, Twain and Keller both grew more radical, which in part accounts for another little-known fact about these two nineteenth-century American celebrities: they formed a very close and lasting friendship that, at least in Keller’s case, may have been one of the most important relationships in either figure’s lives.
~ “Open Culture,” from Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship
Suddenly I want to see the movie which depicts that friendship. So many stories!
Lessons? Not so many. But stories? I’ve a million stories to share. Some of which are even true.
Until next time, thanks for reading.
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