A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (The Carls)

We gave everyone in America that power when we decided that basically anyone can buy an assault rifle.

The most impactful thing you can do with power is almost always to give it away.

You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.

you want to be happy, let go of your wants. If you want to be effective, harness them.

think there’s something inside of us, something at the seed level, something that blooms in us in adolescence and never leaves . . . and it’s just . . . want. Some people have more of it than others, but I think we all have it. And the most amazing tool that I think anyone in the world can have is the ability to control and direct that want.
Some people work to minimize it with mindfulness and meditation; some people let it grow and run free and take over their lives. But some people, and I consider myself one of them, study their want, refine it, and build an engine that burns it. Even if their want pushes all in one direction, they can tack against it like a sailboat, getting somewhere better than where they wanted to be.
I know my want. I know that big well inside of me is never going to get filled. I know that life is not about actually satisfying the want; it’s about using it.

Our reality isn’t about what’s real, it’s about what we pay attention to.

All right, here’s the Miranda Beckwith Guide to Working the Problem.
It doesn’t matter what your problem is, only that you’re sick of it and you’re willing to work.
Step One: Understand Your Problem.
A surprising number of people skip this step, thinking they know what the problem is when actually they don’t. This is something you actually have to think about.
Example: People like me have a habit of saying, “The problem is fossil fuels, we need to stop burning so many fossil fuels!”
But, also, people like me have a habit of being pretty stoked when we get to take a private jet to the Caribbean. More importantly, if we just stopped burning fossil fuels right now, a bunch of people would die of cold or heat or hunger or not being able to get their medicine very, very quickly. The problem of climate change is not simple.
My problem was that I was imprisoned inside my own mind and could not share vital information with the outside world.
Step Two: Understand Your Assets.
This sounds like money, and to some extent it is. But it’s also every piece of equipment you have and everything you know and are good at, and also, critically, everything that other people know and are good at, as long as you can convince those people to help you. My assets were entirely me. I had no outside connection; if I did, my problem would have been solved. So I just had what was in my own head.
Step Three: Understand Your Limitations.
People always skip this one too, but a solution that does not allow for real-world constraints is a bad solution. My limitations were . . . abundant. But limitations are also sometimes your own interests or values. Sometimes you don’t want to solve a problem in a way you won’t enjoy. Sometimes you know you only have a certain number of dollars or hours to spend and don’t want to spend any more. Limitations are fine, as long as you understand them.
Step Four: Stir.
Put your problem, your assets, and your limitations in your head, and shake them together until something falls out. In my experience, bad problem solving almost always comes from either not understanding one of these three things deeply enough, or just completely ignoring one or two of them.
This handy guide will also help you when no solution is presenting itself: You need to rework the problem with new inputs. You reimagine the problem, search for new assets, or try to adjust your limitations. If it still doesn’t work, do it again. And again. Find someone who can add to your asset mix, narrow the scope of the problem, and if that doesn’t work, eventually you give up.
It’s OK to give up sometimes.

We seek the safety of isolation even as it kills us.

We have been falling down the hole of isolation for decades. In order to protect ourselves from potential pain, or damage, or just complication, the walls of social isolation have gotten thicker and taller. Sometimes these walls are actually visible, the AirPods in the grocery store, but usually they’re below our notice. The closing churches, the empty porches.
Even as we have had more and better tools for connection, we spend more time alone and we take every tool we can get to distract ourselves from that loneliness. Too often, those tools are chemical, but we all have our addictions that protect us from the empty irritation of loneliness.
The tools of the internet promised to connect us, but they have just been further surrogates for real connection.

We treat our cats for diseases that are far less preventable than diseases children die of. But no one thinks about it because, ultimately, we aren’t actually acting to prevent the cats’ suffering; we’re acting to prevent our own suffering.