3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

I’ve been thinking about a special category of lesson - one which you cannot discover without experiencing it firsthand.

There is a certain subset of advice that for some reason, we all refuse to learn through instruction.

Unteachable Lessons.

No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it is going to be for us to find out for ourselves, we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings from our elders, songs, literature, historical catastrophes, public scandals and instead think some version of “yeah that might be true for THEM, but not for ME”.

We decide to learn hard lessons the hard way over and over again.

Unfortunately they all seem to be *the big things* too.

It’s never insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party.

Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generation already warned us about.

Things like:

Money won’t make you happy.
Fame won’t fix your self worth.
You don’t love that pretty girl, she’s just hot and difficult to get.
Nothing is as important as you think it is when you’re thinking about it.
You will regret working too much.
Worrying is not improving your performance.
All your fears are a waste of time.
You should see your parents more.
You’ll be fine after the breakup and will be grateful you did it.
It’s perfectly ok to cut toxic people out of your life.

Even reading this list back, I’m rolling my eyes at how fucking trite it is.

These are all basic bitch obvious insights that everybody has heard before.

But if they’re so basic, why does everyone so reliably fall prey to them throughout our lives?

And if they’re so obvious, why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy or lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to proclaim these facts with the renewed grandiose ceremony of someone who’s just gone through religious revelation?

It’s also a list of very contentious points to say on the internet.

If you have interview a billionaire who says that all his money didn’t make him happy, or a movie star who said her fame felt like a prison, the internet will tear them apart for being ungrateful and out of touch.

So not only do we refuse to learn these lessons, we even refuse to hear the message from those warning us about them.

Even more than that - for every one of these, if I think a bit deeper, I can recall a time (including right now) where I convinced myself that I’m the exception to the rule.

That my particular mental makeup, or life situation, or historical wounds, or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable.

No no, MY unique inner landscape WOULD be fixed by skirting around the most well-known wisdom of the ages.

No no, I CAN thread this needle properly, watch me dance through this minefield and avoid all the trip wires that everyone else kicks.

And then you kick one.

“And you will then share a knowing look, the kind that can only occur between two people who have been hurt in exactly the same way.” — Adam Mastroianni

And a voice in the back of your mind will say “I told you so”.

MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Konstantin Kisin - what does the future of the West look like with Trump in charge, why is everyone leaving the UK, are legacy media completely dead, what is the state of culture really?

Thursday.
Dr Rangan Chatterjee - how does the science of behaviour change actually work, what can you do to make new habits stick, what are some resolutions genuinely worth attempting?

Saturday.
David Sutcliffe - ex Gilmore Girls star and now therapist on the importance of authenticity in relationships, self-worth and a psychologically healthy life. Fascinating episode.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
Dog people and cat people are different.

“People who prefer dogs over cats reported higher levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion, while people who prefer cats showed higher openness to experience and neuroticism.

This pattern held even after controlling for participant gender, and the pattern was similar in men and women.” — Rob Henderson

2.
If you’re never done, you’re never happy.

“If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them." — Alan Watts

3.
Why you feel less guilty about things that you don’t think you’re going to get caught for.

Ever notice how guilt does bear a certain correlation with the likelihood of getting caught?

Guilt, which may originally have had the simple role of prompting payment of overdue debts, could begin to serve a second function: prompting the preemptive confession of cheating that seems on the verge of discovery. — Steve Stewart-Williams