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3MM: Presence, Children & Darwin
3 MINUTE MONDAYHi friend, Well that was a spicy few days. If you didn’t catch my episode on the Joe Rogan Experience, listen now on Spotify. I’ve been thinking about presence this week. Blaise Pascal explains the problem… “We never keep to the present.
We anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight.
We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is.
The fact is that the present usually hurts.
We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away.
We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future.
We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future.
The present is never our end.
The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end.
Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”
Looking over the shoulder of the present moment is a guaranteed way to ensure that you miss whatever is true and beautiful in your life right now. Find some presence this week. MODERN WISDOMI do a podcast which has had 500 million+ downloads. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This week’s upcoming episodes: Monday. Thursday. Saturday. THINGS I'VE LEARNED1. A brand new Pew Research Poll looked at 18-34 year olds. 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. 30% say they’re not sure. 18% say they don’t want to have children. Breaking it down by sex; 57% of young men say they want children one day. Whereas only 45% of young women say the same. 2. A meta-analysis (25 studies, over 7,000 participants) concludes that trigger warnings make people feel uncomfortable and have no benefits. “We found that warnings had no effect on affective responses to negative material or on educational outcomes. However, warnings reliably increased anticipatory affect. Findings on avoidance were mixed, suggesting either that warnings have no effect on engagement with material or that they increased engagement with negative material under specific circumstances.” These findings suggest that trigger warnings should not be used as a mental-health tool. — h/t Steve Stewart-Williams 3. Darwin once wrote to a friend about this photo, "If I really have as bad an expression as this photograph gives me, how I can have one single friend is surprising." LIFE HACKBuy Troubled. 5x Modern Wisdom guest Rob Henderson has a new book out tomorrow. If you love social psychology, understanding human nature and fascinating personal stories, this is for you. It’s beautifully written. Big love, Try my productivity drink Neutonic. PS |
3 Minute Monday
Podcaster with 1bn+ plays. I write about the most important lessons from the best thinkers on the planet. 300,000+ people read my free newsletter. Press subscribe to join.
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, We live with a quiet superstition: that beneath the noise of our habits, mistakes and contradictions lies a truer version of ourselves - a self that is fundamentally good. An alcoholic who gets sober is “becoming who he really is”, a sober man who starts drinking again has “lost his way.” In Scrooge, Dickens didn’t just write about a man who swapped stinginess for generosity; he wrote about a man who discovered his real nature. When Richard Nixon fell in disgrace,...
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