Words of wisdom

Convenience has to serve something greater than itself, lest it lead only to more convenience. In her 1963 classic, “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan looked at what household technologies had done for women and concluded that they had just created more demands. “Even with all the new labor-saving appliances,” she wrote, “the modern American housewife probably spends more time on housework than her grandmother.” When things become easier, we can seek to fill our time with more “easy” tasks. At some point, life’s defining struggle becomes the tyranny of tiny chores and petty decisions.

An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is “easy” is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we don’t actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life.

Isn’t struggle natural and inevitable? I used to believe that emotional pain was something to be solved, something that signified to me a failure in my personal growth. The realisation that we cannot escape emotional pain in this life and shouldn’t expect to has been utterly liberating. Happiness can never be guaranteed. We are all bound to experience loss, grief, failure, and shame. Nobody is above the laws of life. To set happiness and the absence of suffering as your goal, is to set yourself up for a life of misery. 

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
—John Stuart Mill

In the context of health and ecology, things that grow unchecked are often considered parasitic or cancerous. Yet we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative. Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing (ed note: or experiencing) something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way. But we should.”

we tell ourselves that the real version of life is just around the corner, and in the meantime we tolerate the draft version. what nobody tells you is that the draft often is the final copy, not because nothing changes but because you were always meant to live in the middle, not at the finale.

clarice lispector is an author who wrote for people who linger in that wanting. she understood the strange violence of existential desire and the hunger to feel life and live it in a way that borders on unbearable. her characters don’t seek pleasure, they seek contact with what’s real in this world. they want to touch life without mediation, even if it burns.

Not taste in the superficial sense—not trend-chasing, not aesthetic mimicry, not expensive minimalism for the sake of status. Real taste. The kind that signals coherence. Clarity. The ability to choose what matters in a world drowning in what doesn’t.
Because when abundance is infinite, attention is everything. And what you give your attention to—what you consume, what you engage with, what you amplify—becomes a reflection of how you think.
We used to associate intelligence with accumulation. The smartest people were the ones who knew the most. But that model doesn’t hold anymore. AI knows more than anyone. Wikipedia is free. The internet has flattened information access so thoroughly that hoarding knowledge is no longer impressive. What matters now is what you do with it. How you filter it. How you recognize signal in the noise.
Curation is the new IQ test.

Atlas Press (@atlaspress)

To my mind, the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur to us only when we are not doing them,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. “Once we are standing in front of the sink with our sleeves rolled up and our hands in warm water, it is really not bad at all.” He goes on to say that if he were incapable of finding joy in washing the dishes, it would sap the rest of his life of joy too, because he would spend all moments of rest dreading the chores that awaited him afterward. “I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment.” Finding pleasure in the dishes, then, is crucial to enjoying his life more broadly. “Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred.”

We’re drowning in content.
Every platform, every scroll, every second—more inputs, more noise, more things trying to hook your attention. The old metrics of intelligence—who memorized the most, who spoke the loudest, who finished the book first—don’t mean much here.
In an age where AI can generate anything, the question is no longer "can it be made?" but "is it worth making?" The frontier isn’t volume—it’s discernment. And in that shift, taste has become a survival skill.
Not taste in the superficial sense—not trend-chasing, not aesthetic mimicry, not expensive minimalism for the sake of status. Real taste. The kind that signals coherence. Clarity. The ability to choose what matters in a world drowning in what doesn’t.
Because when abundance is infinite, attention is everything. And what you give your attention to—what you consume, what you engage with, what you amplify—becomes a reflection of how you think.
We used to associate intelligence with accumulation. The smartest people were the ones who knew the most. But that model doesn’t hold anymore. AI knows more than anyone. Wikipedia is free. The internet has flattened information access so thoroughly that hoarding knowledge is no longer impressive. What matters now is what you do with it. How you filter it. How you recognize signal in the noise.
Curation is the new IQ test.

for the longest time, i believed that my “real life” would announce itself like a drumroll. maybe it would arrive the day i got a certain job, or when i moved into an apartment that felt less temporary, or the moment i walked into a room and finally felt like i belonged. but most of the time, it didn’t feel like life was arriving — it felt like i was rehearsing. i’d sit in my first apartment, the one with thin walls and a leaky sink, and instead of enjoying it i’d think about the bigger, better place i’d have someday. i’d buy cheap furniture with the idea that it was just “for now.” and yet, months and years passed inside that “for now,” which means it wasn’t temporary at all. it was my life. i just didn’t recognize it.

Bandura (1977) frequently referred to a behavioural concept called ‘self-efficacy’ in his work. It refers to how deeply an individual believes in his or her capacity to exert control over their own motivation, behaviour, and social environment. Bandura’s discovery was that despite having the tools and skills to complete a task, a person with a low sense of self-efficacy would not have the capacity to utilise them. You will not succeed if you do not believe you can. It’s a rather basic and seemingly fairly obvious concept, however, it is particularly meaningful in relation to self-respect. 
In every situation, you are simultaneously both the actor and observer of your life. In every interaction with another person you are simultaneously interacting with that person and watching yourself interact with that person. This is meaningful. Self-respect is a psychological need that can only be fulfilled independently of others; it is established by you, within you, in front of you. 

overthinking has a way of tricking you into believing you’re making progress when really, you’re just rehearsing anxiety until it feels like fact. you spend hours trying to “figure it out,” only to realize that what you’ve actually done is build a mental maze with no exit. 

the waiting room of adulthood is full of props. your first desk that feels flimsy because you imagine the mahogany one you’ll own later. the job that feels like a stepping stone because you imagine the one with a bigger title. the relationship you treat with hesitation because you imagine the one that will feel like fireworks. we tell ourselves that the real version of life is just around the corner, and in the meantime we tolerate the draft version. what nobody tells you is that the draft often is the final copy, not because nothing changes but because you were always meant to live in the middle, not at the finale.
the tricky part is that waiting feels deceptively productive. you convince yourself you’re being patient, that you’re saving energy for the grand moment when it all aligns. you imagine it’s better to be cautious than to settle. but underneath, what you’re really doing is putting a pause on joy, as if happiness should be preserved until the conditions are perfect. that’s like waiting to wear a favorite outfit until you have the right shoes — you spend years in clothes you don’t like while the good ones just hang there, unworn.

i’ve started to think that the hardest part of wanting a big life is not ambition itself, but the disorientation that follows it. there’s no map for people like us. we know how to long, yearn, desire. but we don’t know how to choose. and the longer we linger in that wanting, the easier it becomes to confuse indecision with depth and this restlessness with potential.

clarice wrote about that contradiction the way saints wrote about god. she believed that consciousness was both a gift and a wound. to be awake is to suffer the awareness of everything you are and everything you’ll never be. 

We’ve turned the internet into a vending machine. Push a button, get the Coke. If it doesn’t spit it out fast enough, beat the living shit out of it until it gives you two cokes. Instead, rabbit holing retrains both your curiosity and your patience. It reminds you the internet is more like a labyrinth, and the labyrinth rewards wanderers.

Self-Respect
Self-respect is fundamentally different to self-love in that it is not contingent upon self-affirmation, indulgence, or external validation. Self-love encourages a self-acceptance without challenge or accountability, while self-respect demands integrity, discipline, and—most importantly—a steadfast alignment with one's values. If your worldview is one of higher purpose and one that acknowledges the reality that struggle is a condition of life, ‘feeling good’ is peripheral. What becomes central is dignity, self-confidence, resilience, and an ability to rely on yourself. Unlike self-love, which has few, if any, conditions and can drift into narcissism or self-indulgence, self-respect demands a lot from us. It requires that we honour our commitments and uphold our moral principles practically. It requires that we repeatedly do what we say we will do. 

Embracing inconvenience may sound odd, but we already do it without thinking of it as such. As if to mask the issue, we give other names to our inconvenient choices: We call them hobbies, avocations, callings, passions. These are the noninstrumental activities that help to define us. They reward us with character because they involve an encounter with meaningful resistance — with nature’s laws, with the limits of our own bodies — as in carving wood, melding raw ingredients, fixing a broken appliance, writing code, timing waves or facing the point when the runner’s legs and lungs begin to rebel against him.

Liminal spaces change how the brain processes information. The anterior cingulate cortex, your brain’s conflict detector, becomes hyperactive in ambiguous situations. Meanwhile, your amygdala starts firing warning signals about potential threats lurking in the unknown.

This neurological response evolved to keep our ancestors alive in genuinely dangerous situations. But in modern liminal spaces, it often backfires, creating anxiety about changes that could actually be opportunities for growth.

imagine dedicating one day each week to curiosity alone (with no outcome attached). autumn makes this easier because it is a season that values interiority and it will reward you if you sit still long enough to be curious again. maybe you read about medieval medicine, or study constellations, or learn a piece of music that has no use except to enchant you. when practiced weekly, this becomes an education in freedom because you are teaching yourself that not everything needs to be useful and that knowledge can be a pleasure and curiosity itself is reason enough.

When you see your own patterns, thoughts, and frustrations beautifully articulated by someone else, your brain lights up with recognition. It triggers the same social circuitry that makes you feel close to someone who just finished your sentence. It’s bonding. It’s belonging. It’s addictive. That’s what makes it so powerful.

sometimes we get afraid that choosing means settling. but choosing is what actually makes life tangible. you can wait forever for the real thing, or you can pick up the pen and underline the page you’re on. the pen doesn’t make the story permanent, it just makes you notice you’re in it.
nobody tells you this because it sounds anticlimactic, but the truth is there’s no “arrival.” the job, the relationship, the city — they don’t transform into a different kind of life. they just give you new details to live through. the question is whether you’re willing to see the details you already have as worthy of being lived.

The relief in that shift was recognizing how much the little stuff always mattered, even when I treated it like a nuisance. These days I really do believe that chores give my life meaning. Not just because they present texture and struggle and a necessary counterpart to rest (all true), but because maintenance is in itself profound. Caring for ourselves, for other people, for our homes, for plants and other animals—these are the unfinishable projects of our lives. We do them over and over not to conquer them, or for personal gain, but to maintain and nourish them, with no greater expectation. Given how swayed humans are by the pursuit of growth, wealth, ownership, and power, I think this is very sweet and pure. Almost spiritual.

Think of all the times someone else’s phrasing helped you finally name something you’d only felt vaguely. As if their words handed you the scaffolding to climb into a new version of yourself (what the best art does!), because language sculpts thought. Every conversation subtly alters the brain’s architecture. Every sentence is a small act of rewiring.
That’s why some conversations change you even if you barely speak through what’s transferred. Emotion, belief, subtle permission. You begin to see yourself as someone capable of softness, of insight, of love.
Words also have a mirrored quality. In conversation, the brain syncs through listening. Neuroscientist Uri Hasson, PhD, a pioneer in neural mirroring (also known as brain coupling), examined brain scans of subjects in conversation. What he found was surprising, Fredrickson writes:

the strange courage of adulthood isn’t chasing the next milestone; it’s learning to inhabit the draft version as though it counts, because it does. the mug you drink from every morning, the person you text when you feel unsteady, the quiet walk you take after dinner — those are not practice runs. those are the scaffolding of a life that is happening whether or not you’ve declared it real.
and if you’re worried that naming this life as yours will lock you in, remind yourself of this: permanence isn’t the point. you can still move cities, change jobs, fall in love again. but until then, you deserve to live the version you’re already in, not just tolerate it.

Many of us fall into the trap of believing that we’ll know when we’re ready. But the key to making any real progress is to be able to transition from preparation to action before you feel ready

Do you actually even want to “go big”?
Another question, we need to ask ourselves is do I even want to be BIG? I love money and I love attention. I am ambitious. But what I actually want, more than money and more than attention is to live my life doing what I love. I love to create. I love to write. For most artists, the biggest reason they want to make money with their art is so they can make more art. Don’t get me wrong, I love business class flights. I am also weirdly keen on applause, girl loves to be clapped. 

think the reason so many of us wait is because it’s easier than committing. if you declare “this is it,” then you risk the disappointment of it not matching the fantasy. waiting feels safer: you don’t have to fully invest, you don’t have to admit you’re lonely in the apartment you swore was temporary, you don’t have to confess that the job you thought would launch you feels like a treadmill. but when you live in the waiting room too long, your life starts to blur. you scroll through years of photos and realize they all carry that same subtext: i’ll enjoy it later, when the real thing comes.
the shift for me happened in small, unglamorous ways. i started buying bowls i actually liked instead of whatever was cheapest, because i realized i was going to eat hundreds of meals out of them whether or not i called that apartment “temporary.” i started treating my evenings like evenings instead of placeholders for a future routine i hadn’t built yet. i stopped talking about work as if it were a practice run and instead tried to find something i actually valued in what i was doing. it wasn’t about forcing gratitude; it was about noticing that i was spending real time — irreplaceable time — in what i had dismissed as “just for now.”

what we call balance or control or stability is just a trick we play to avoid feeling the truth and that we are vast, chaotic, and full of contradictions.

When reading stopped being ‘nerdy’ and started being seen as cool, it became social capital, an aesthetic and an accessory.

so here’s what nobody tells you: your real life isn’t waiting. it’s the one you’re in right now, half-finished and unpolished, with dishes in the sink and rent you resent and friends who don’t always text back. one day you’ll look back and realize these were the years that built you — not the someday, not the after, but the now.

We don’t often think of ourselves as an audience or a spectator to our choices, but we are. Every decision we make is witnessed by the quiet observer within us—the part of ourselves that knows when we have honored our word or betrayed it. This internal witness does not judge with fleeting emotions or external standards; it registers, with quiet certainty, whether we are living in alignment with our values or falling short of them. Over time, these observations accumulate, shaping how we see ourselves. When we consistently follow through on our commitments, no matter how small, we reinforce a sense of integrity. Conversely, when we repeatedly neglect our own promises, we erode our self-respect, fostering guilt, disappointment, and a low self-esteem.

In an age where AI can generate anything, the question is no longer "can it be made?" but "is it worth making?" The frontier isn’t volume—it’s discernment. And in that shift, taste has become a survival skill.

it’s less about the big milestones and more about the constant tide of small tasks. every week asks you to pay, renew, submit, schedule, reply, update, sign. none of these things are dramatic on their own, but strung together, they take up hours and drain more energy than you’d think possible. adulthood, it turns out, is less a series of bold choices and more a lifetime of maintenance.

The problem with trending towards big
The thing is, bigness is not a natural law. It is an ideology worshiped by huge corporations because, unlike small creators, they actually do need it to survive. 
Big companies need huge revenues or they die. Marvel invested an estimated $275,000,000 in Thunderbolts. After accounting for all the costs associated with distribution and marketing, it needed to make just under half a billion dollars to break even. Spoiler, it didn’t. 
These numbers are cooked. Modern movies need to be a global hit just to break even! It doesn’t have to be that way. There isn’t some BOOK OF CAPITALISM that sits in the president’s office, having come down from heaven. We make the economy every day.2 It is people making choices, laws, and decisions.

We’re living in what I call the ‘performance economy’ where showing the work is seen as more valuable than doing the actual work.”

As task after task becomes easier, the growing expectation of convenience exerts a pressure on everything else to be easy or get left behind. We are spoiled by immediacy and become annoyed by tasks that remain at the old level of effort and time. When you can skip the line and buy concert tickets on your phone, waiting in line to vote in an election is irritating. This is especially true for those who have never had to wait in lines (which may help explain the low rate at which young people vote).