Greetings everyone,
This week’s newsletter at a glance:
On Life Experience
Ravel
Creativity & Bipolar Disorder
Bon courage!
Reading for volume is a fool’s choice. You’ll get more from reading three great books and writing a careful summary of each one than racing through 50 books on the best-seller list.
—David Perell
✏️ On Life Experience
I have never been less sure of my convictions. Experience, to me, is just the accumulation of mistakes over time, and the ability to act with tact and understanding in light of those mistakes. When you see someone doing something you have done before, good or bad, you realize they are only doing the best they can with what they have. As we all are.
Experience is knowing that you will learn tomorrow, and a little more the next day, and eventually these small accumulations of knowledge and happenstances will transform you into a very different person with very different beliefs. To be rigid in one’s belief is to say that you are content with what you [think you] know now, and that you are ready to start standing up for these convictions. When I think of some of the beliefs I hold about work, life, love, and the like, there are very few of them I am willing to die for. It is because I know how much experience can change my opinion, as it has done in the past. I am aware of my ignorance, to whatever degree that is possible, and it feels wrong to suggest that I know any more than anyone else. Of course, in practice, it rarely happens that way. Ego, trauma, emotion, and prejudice often distort this perspective. But I try not to let it be too much.
I guess that is the beginning of wisdom. If I may so.
Vincit qui se vincit.
He conquers who conquers himself.
💡 Food for Thought
God tests His most faithful believers the hardest.
🔗 Sunday Best
Friends as Entertainment
By James Richardson
Most of the time we spend face-to-face with friends today focuses on a very narrow range of fun-focused activities – going to shows/events/festivals, a summer BBQ, a holiday potluck, bar gatherings, and restaurant meetups for lively conversation. To have ‘fun.’ To laugh. To hear and tell jokes. To gossip. We’re so disconnected from them that we use these events “to catch up.”
My Favourite Classical Song
Played by Ravel himself! From a 1922 piano roll.
Igniting the Creative Fire: The Neurobiology of Creativity in Bipolar Disorder
Van Gogh, Beethoven and Edgar Allan Poe were luminaries in their respective fields of art, music and poetry. Their passion for their art forms kindled a creative fire of productivity that affects humanity centuries later. Yet, all of them, like many other creative artists, poets and musicians, suffered from depression or bipolar disorder. In this age of advancement in the neurosciences we have been empowered to explore the age old question that this pardox presents: Is "madness" a part and parcel of "creative genius?" In this seminar we will explore the links between mood disorders and profound creativity.
If a person is honest he’ll never be satisfied with himself.
—Leo Tolstoy
Thanks for coming!
AT