Selections from my Commonplace Book

35 Things Life Has Taught Me

Six years ago I started writing a list of thirty things that I thought life had started teaching me up to that point. Life has not yet reached the “overcoming your tendency to procrastinate” lesson in its curriculum for me, hence my publishing this today with five additional items. I think the first time I came across this genre was in 2016 when I read Maria Popova’s "10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings", but I can’t be certain. Although there are a number of imperatives on the list, it was not intended to be a manual or recipe for living; rather, it reflects a few of the themes and threads of life that, for whatever reason, are of enduring significance to me. Each point has its associated memory or memories—which I have not included here—that prompted its inclusion in the list. The contents of the list come from the commonplace book that I have kept since 2007 that contains a running collection of quotations, my own reflections, and my idiosyncratic amalgams of the two, which I continue to update today.

When I began writing this it was for myself alone, and so certain seemingly niche or cryptic themes are stressed while other important ones I ignored completely. Most I included after collisions with reality sufficiently jarring that I actually learned something¹. Some are linked to memories of triumph and joy, others are reminders of the depths of my own stupidity, and still others serve as memorials. Some are meant to be maxims, others prompts to pause and reflect. Given my original audience of one, I was not aiming for originality, profundity, or universality.

1. Be truthful. The numbering of this list is basically arbitrary, with the exception of the first. Few things make life harder than an inability to tell the truth. Few things lead more reliably to ruin than lying.

   1. Through dishonesty the deceiver becomes the deceived. Self-knowledge is rare among liars. It is difficult to tell the truth to others without being able to tell it to oneself.

   2. White lies are often given exception. To the contrary: do you like the idea that people wont tell you the truth because they don’t think you’re grown up enough to hear it? Very often an “attempt to spare someone’s feelings” is also an attempt to avoid confronting the fact that one is too cowardly to tell the truth. And remember, a single lie destroys a whole reputation for honesty. Deceit is regarded as bad coin and, worse, the deceiver as the coiner.²

   3. The reputational benefits of being known as someone who consistently tells the truth are inestimable. But remember: telling the truth well can be difficult, and truths told badly or with malice can cause ruin—so timing, dosage, and tact are of the essence.

2. Be inflexible only in your integrity.

3. You are never too old to learn some humility.

4. It is impossible to be virtuous or happy without gratitude.³ Few vices are uglier than ingratitude.

   1. If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how would it draw to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of attraction. The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.⁴

5. Most other people aren’t as happy as you think they are.

6. Avoid needless cares. What isn’t there can’t break.⁵

7. Kindness is underrated. Common courtesy even more-so.

8. Never make excuses. Always take ownership of your mistakes. It’s good for your character and will preserve trust with others. And, for those particularly skilled at making excuses, be especially aware of making excuses while clothing them in the garb of “explaining how things played out from my perspective.”

9. You are dying daily.

   1. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death's hands…

      Hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity, – time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.⁶ 

10. Pick your associates carefully.

11. Subject yourself to some voluntary hardship. (NB: This one was from before I had children.)

    1. Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

       …The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.⁷

12. However lofty your philosophies may be, remember their limits.

    1. Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, which deserves that we employ in its pursuit not only time, sweat, trouble, and worldly goods, but even life; inasmuch as without it life comes to be painful and oppressive to us. Pleasure, wisdom, knowledge, and virtue, without her, grow tarnished and vanish away; and to the strongest and most rigorous arguments that philosophy would impress on us to the contrary, we have only to oppose the picture of Plato being struck with a fit of epilepsy or apoplexy, and on this supposition defy him to call to his aid those noble and rich faculties of his soul.⁸

13. Learn to profit from your failures.

    1. Aside from fortune, most problems in life come from the stumbling blocks we continuously place in our own paths. If you cannot turn a failure into a success, at least learn from it. Most of life consists in this.

14. We underestimate the power of listening and overestimate the power of speaking.

    1. When someone else is talking, how often are you really listening as opposed to thinking of the next thing you are going to say? Diarrhea of the mouth leads to constipation of the ears. Cautious silence is where prudence takes refuge.⁹

15. You can’t cut against the grain of your nature too much. Much unhappiness comes from trying to be someone you are not. In the end we do not create ourselves; we become ourselves.

16. Intelligence without discipline is wasted.

17. There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.¹⁰

18. Fake it ‘till you make it. (Everyone else already does).

19. The purpose of life is to live well, not to show others that you live well.

20. Judge others not by their achievements, but by how they fulfill their potential. 

21. Extravagant resolutions cost nothing.

22. Beware of observing others’ defects as a balm for you own inadequacies.

    1. Do not be angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.¹¹

23. Eradicate the desire to put your displeasure on display for others.

    1. Examine yourself; scrutinize and observe yourself in diverse ways; but mark, before all else, whether it is in philosophy or in mere life-years that you have made progress. Philosophy is no trick to catch the public; it is not devised for show. It is a matter, not of words, but of facts. It is not pursued in order that the day may yield some amusement before it is spent, or that our leisure may be relieved of a tedium that irks us. It molds and constructs the soul; it orders our life, guides our conduct, shows us what we should do and what we should leave undone; it sits at the helm and directs our course as we waver amid uncertainties.¹²

24. Hold nothing in contempt, for anything may be a signpost to instruction. Everything is grist for the mill.

    1. You can learn from anyone and everything. Smile at misfortune, for it is your teacher. Listen to your enemies, for they are your greatest teachers. Who is wise? One who can learn from every man.¹³

    2. Do not scorn any man, and do not discount any thing. For there is no man who has not his hour, and no thing that has not its place.¹⁴

25. Self-pity is poisonous; avoid it at all costs.

26. Do not rehearse your anger.

27. Make new the familiar—or—learn how not to be bored. If you know how to pay attention to the little things around you, you will rarely be bored. If you carry a good book with you wherever you go, you will never be bored.

    1. In all contemplation, even that of a fly or of a passing cloud, there is a fit occasion for endless reflection. Every light striking an object may lead up to the sun…¹⁵

28. As with cooking, so with life: never substitute a microwave when a slow cooker is called for. Everything really worth doing takes patience, attentive effort, and proper seasoning.

29. The day is short, the work is much, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the Master is pressing.¹⁶

30. Nothing is more tiring than taking everything too seriously. Life without humor is like dinner without salt.

    1. Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health.¹⁷

31. We never know ourselves quite as well as we think.

    1. We mistake what is on the surface for the depths, and vice versa; meanwhile others may see deeper into us by looking on the surface than we are able to see of ourselves from within. Be suspicious of your own authenticity; self-deception is the water in which we swim. Some are so underwater that they lie with sincerity.

32. Don’t try to be happy, try to be good. Few strategies guarantee neurotic misery quite like trying to be happy. Do not confuse tranquility for happiness.

    1. Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.¹⁸

    2. That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem; and what can any man infer in his own favour from a condition to which, however prosperous, he contributed nothing, and which the vilest and weakest of the species would have obtained by the same right, had he happened to be the son of the same father?

       To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; and if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.¹⁹

33. Life is tragic and loss is inevitable. Look reality in the face as much as you can stomach it and bear you misfortunes with grace. Court good fortune with discretion and patience.

    1. What is opposed brings together; and the most beautiful harmony is composed of things at variance; and all things come about by strife.²⁰

34. A life without friendship is not fully lived.

35. Do not waste your life. You’ve had one birth, that’s all you get, and the curtain could close any minute. The life you have doesn’t pause while you rehearse the life you want. So press on, rallying what is best within you against what is worst. Be good, do good, and try to make the world a little better for you having been here. All the better if you can do it with a companion. Work out your life’s mission with diligence and joy.

    1. Because each and every minute is made up of seconds and of even briefer fragments of time, and every fragment ought not to be allowed to pass in vain…I must feel certain that not only at the moment of my death shall I be able to account for the time I have lived; I ought to be ready at every moment of my life to confront myself and say - This is what I’ve done.²¹

1. Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a void with great speed. — Jerry Seinfeld

2. Baltasar Gracián, The Oracle, A Manual of the Art of Prudence, §181

3. There is a quote attributed to Cicero that I kept at hand for a long time which says, “gratus animus est una virtus non solum maxima, sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum”, meaning “A grateful soul is not only the greatest virtue, but also the mother of all other virtues.” It turns out Cicero never actually wrote this, at least as far as I can tell. This maxim most likely comes from the following, taken from Cicero’s Pro Plancio 33.80, “etenim, iudices, cum omnibus virtutibus me adfectum esse cupio, tum nihil est quod malim quam me et esse gratum et videri. haec enim est una virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum.” This translates roughly to “In fact, judges, while I wish I were endowed with every virtue, still there is nothing I want more than to be, and be seen as, grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the mother of all other virtues.”

4. Henry Ward Beecher 

5. See also Socrates in the Phaedrus 279b-c—

O beloved Pan and all ye other gods of this place, grant to me that I be made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in harmony with my inner man. May I consider the wise man rich; and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure. Do we need anything more, Phaedrus? For me that prayer is enough.

6. Seneca, Epistles, I.2-3

7. William James, The Principles of Psychology, ch. 4, Habit

8. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, 2.37 “Of the Resemblance of Children to Their Fathers”

9. Baltasar Gracián, The Oracle, A Manual of the Art of Prudence, §3

10. Paraphrased from Thomas Sowell, somewhere in A Conflict of Visions

11. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

12. Seneca, Epistles. For a somewhat different take, Hume remarks in his Essay “The Skeptic”—

It may seem unreasonable absolutely to deny the authority of philosophy in this respect: But it must be confessed, that there lies this strong presumption against it, that, if these views be natural and obvious, they would have occurred of themselves, without the assistance of philosophy; if they be not natural, they never can have any influence on the affections. These are of a very delicate nature, and cannot be forced or constrained by the utmost art or industry. A consideration, which we seek for on purpose, which we enter into with difficulty, which we cannot retain without care and attention, will never produce those genuine and durable movements of passion, which are the result of nature, and the constitution of the mind. A man may as well pretend to cure himself of love, by viewing his mistress through the artificial medium of a microscope or prospect, and beholding there the coarseness of her skin, and monstrous disproportion of her features, as hope to excite or moderate any passion by the artificial arguments of a Seneca or an Epictetus. The remembrance of the natural aspect and situation of the object, will, in both cases, still recur upon him. The reflections of philosophy are too subtile and distant to take place in common life, or eradicate any affection. The air is too fine to breathe in, where it is above the winds and clouds of the atmosphere.

Another defect of those refined reflections, which philosophy suggests to us, is, that commonly they cannot diminish or extinguish our vicious passions, without diminishing or extinguishing such as are virtuous, and rendering the mind totally indifferent and unactive. They are, for the most part, general, and are applicable to all our affections. In vain do we hope to direct their influence only to one side. If by incessant study and meditation we have rendered them intimate and present to us, they will operate throughout, and spread an universal insensibility over the mind. When we destroy the nerves, we extinguish the sense of pleasure, together with that of pain, in the human body.

13. Ethics of the Fathers 4:1

14. Ethics of the Fathers 4:3

15. Antonin Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

16. Ethics of the Fathers, 2:15

17. Julia Child

18. Tennessee Williams

19. Samuel Johnson, anticipating Theodore Roosevelt

20. Heraclitus, fragment; from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 8.2 1155b4

21. Yoni Netanyahu. In short, be a mensch.