Meditations 4.51:
“Take the shortest route, the one that nature planned—to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculation and pretension.”
Direct, clear, healthy.
Speak the truth. Do what’s right.
If you say “It’s complicated”, consider that might just be code for pain and stress and possibly calculation and pretension.
Overthinking and delay prolong the pain.
Do what you know to be right.
Take the shortest route.
I don’t drink milk very often. I don’t eat cereal. Occasionally I’ll have a glass with a warm cookie fresh out of the oven–a nostalgic pleasure from childhood.
But my daughters drink milk, and we’ve always given them whole milk. It just seems right. The less processed, the better, right? And we spring not just for organic milk, we buy a brand produced by pastured cows, cows that eat grass, not grains.
I don’t recall seeing whole milk in other people’s refrigerators when we visit family or friends. It’s almost as if whole milk is considered dangerous.
So, I was heartened recently to see this article: The case for drinking whole milk.
From the article:
In 2013, the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care published findings from a study that tracked the impact of dairy fat intake on 1,782 men. Twelve years after researchers took the initial measurements, they found that consumption of butter, high-fat milk, and cream several times a week were related to lower levels of central obesity, while “a low intake of dairy fat… was associated with a higher risk of developing central obesity.” (Central obesity means a waist-to-hip ratio equal to or greater than one—i.e. big in the middle.)
Still skeptical? Shortly after that study came out, the European Journal of Nutrition published a meta-analysis of 16 studies on the relationship between dairy fat, obesity, and cardiometabolic disease. (A meta-analysis combines findings from multiple, independent studies, and when done correctly, provides better coverage of a question than any single study usually can.) Its findings will be revelatory for anyone who drinks skim for weight control:
The observational evidence does not support the hypothesis that dairy fat or high-fat dairy foods contribute to obesity or cardiometabolic risk, and suggests that high-fat dairy consumption within typical dietary patterns is inversely associated with obesity risk.
This continues the recent surge of research showing that we’ve been wrong all along about fat, especially saturated fat. Our culture saw a sharp rise in obesity rates after fat was demonized and after we were told to fill the base of our food pyramid with grains.
The low fat push ended up making us fat.
I’m not saying “milk does a body good”. (Humans consuming the milk of cows sparks a whole other set of questions.) But fat, even saturated fat, may not be the culprit we’ve been led to believe.
Sugar, however, is poison. Tasty, tasty poison…
This lovely Zen Pencils post introduced me to the pianist James Rhodes, who has an incredible personal story to go along with his immense musical talent.
He came through an abusive childhood and was given new life by music.
I listened to his Live in Brighton album while I worked today. Between pieces he discusses the stories of the musicians and the compositions he’s playing. His language is frank, funny, and a bit off-color, and it’s the most refreshing experience I’ve had with classical music since I first discovered composer Benjamin Zander’s TED Talk.
He talks about how lacking the term “classical” is for the genre and wonders if it’s “serious” music.
How many classical albums have earned an “Explicit” label in iTunes?
Intrigued? Check it out.
I just returned from a quick beach getaway with my wife’s family.
I took a few days off from posting on this site while I was gone, and I came home to an email from a friend wondering if everything was okay. He was used to me posting something daily. How nice that he was concerned when I went missing from the internet for a few days.
I do try to find something to share here every day, and I had a nice streak going before this recent break.
Some days I post just a quote or a link to something I’ve found online or a book I’m reading. Occasionally it will be something more substantial.
But I’ve discovered that this daily discipline adds some juice to my days. I wake up knowing I need to find something worthwhile to share. And my antennae are up. I’m on the search for interesting. I learn things I otherwise wouldn’t because I’m actively seeking something new to share.
I’m sure photographers actually see things most of us don’t because they’re in the business of finding and creating things worth seeing.
It’s a double pleasure if something I share is meaningful to someone else, because my initial audience is just me. If no one reads what I write, at least I have benefitted from the experience of trying to find something worthwhile and understand it well enough to communicate it.
Making a regular habit of expressing yourself, in whatever medium works for you, will have you seeing and feeling and finding in ways you never would otherwise.
“The best way to understand something is to try to express it.” –Brenda Ueland
If you don’t know know where to start with jazz music but have a feeling you ought to explore the genre, start with Kind of Blue.
It’s Miles Davis, yes, but he’s accompanied by Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly and Bill Evans and Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. A dream team at their artistic peak.
The iTunes description of the album closes with “Modern jazz starts here.”
This article makes a compelling case for why electric cars will dominate sooner than you might think.
Tesla will do for electric cars what’s Apple did for smartphones:
Gas stations are not massively profitable businesses [4]. When 10% of the vehicles on the road are electric many of them will go out of business. This will immediately make driving a gasoline powered car more inconvenient. When that happens even more gasoline car owners will be convinced to switch and so on. Rapidly a tipping point will be reached, at which point finding a convenient gas station will be nearly impossible [5] and owning a gasoline powered car will positively suck. Then, there will be a rush to electric cars not seen since, well, the rush to buy smartphones.
I’m on a big picture, big history kick right now.
I’ve been reading a great history of Homo sapiens, and I’ve started listening to the audio version of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.
Bryson’s book is a delightful survey of the biggest ideas and discoveries that explain what we know about the universe.
What stands out is just how much we got wrong and how certain we were in our errors.
The steps forward were usually dependent on those who were willing to embrace uncertainty and not-knowing, who could follow their curiosity rather than their egos.
“Until you have done something for humanity you should be ashamed to die.” –Horace Mann
We can actually see Pluto for the first time ever. Incredible!
We (meaning the brilliant humans of NASA and the New Horizons team) launched this piano sized spacecraft nine years ago and sent it hurtling toward the edge of the solar system.
It is now more than 3 billion (!) miles from home and sending back stunningly detailed information about what was the most mysterious world in our planetary neighborhood.
That we can do something like this, that we can truly “boldly go where no one has gone before”, burnishes my optimism for our species.
Richard Dawkins from his book, Unweaving The Rainbow:
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”
“Do not aspire to immortal life but exhaust the limits of the possible.”–Pindar
My aspiration should be to fulfill my potential, to be the most excellent version of myself possible.
Posterity, my reputation when I’m gone, is beyond my control. And what does it matter anyway?
Life here and now is enough for me. I’ve not come close to exhausting my limits.
But every day offers a new chance and a fresh start.
What’s possible tomorrow? How can I be even slightly better than I was today?
Seeing inside the process of a craftsman or artist makes me appreciate their work more. Knowing how the magic is made doesn’t diminish the magic; it enhances it.
And that kind of transparency inspires me to push through the messy misfires and tedious small steps on the way to making my own art.
Even the world’s greatest masterpieces didn’t emerge instantly pristine. Imagine how many discarded drafts and crumpled sketches and trashed recipes came before the lauded final product. Trial and error and daily effort and persistence don’t grab headlines, but the art wouldn’t be art without the work.
Want to make something great? Do the work.
Inspired by Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work”, I regularly share behind-the-scenes glimpses of projects I’m working on. Let’s demystify the creative process and encourage others to dive in and make something remarkable, too.
All of us can make art. If it’s something you care about and making it would be meaningful to others, it’s art. Your work, your hobby, your passion.
I love this video that was just released showing the work being done now on the upcoming film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens:
This is the kind of thing you would usually see only after a film has been released. But the creators are “showing their work” in progress, and it gives a sense of just how much they care about what they’re making. Now I have a new hope (see what I did there?) for the future of this grand story.
The big picture provides perspective.
Regularly seeing yourself in the context of the universe—just how small and insignificant you really are—will nudge you back off the ledge.
You are unique. There has never been and will never be another you. Be the best expression of you you can be.
But you are just an infinitesimally small part of the universe. It doesn’t spin around you. It’s mostly indifferent to you. It will go on just fine with or without you.
And maybe that should hurt my ego, but instead it frees me to not take myself too seriously.
Thinking this way can free us to just enjoy the ride and relish our good fortune to have made it onto the stage in our bit part in this grand cosmic extravaganza.
When you get there you will only be right here, right now.
How I can live now and not defer my living to some future now?
I typically have at least two books or more in play at any time. Right now it’s Sapiens, a “history of humankind”, and the sci-fi novel Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.
But I can’t resist adding to my reading list. E-books make it easy to try samples of books before buying.
Here’s what’s on my to-consider-next list for books:
Philosophy, a memoir, historical fiction, something about training a hawk, what appears to be THE definitive account of The Beatles, and an epic biography.
It’s a delight to ponder what might be next in capturing my attention and inspiring new thoughts and different ways of understanding.
Keep your reading fresh and varied. And just keep reading.
Or as Peter Drucker put it:
“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.”
Efficiency is meaningless, or even harmful, without effectiveness. What’s the point in going in the wrong direction faster?
Focus on the essentials first. Keep checking your direction. Then drill down to efficiency and methods.
Suck is a default starting point for almost all truly great work.
From Ed Catmull’s great book, Creativity, Inc.:
“And yet, candor could not be more crucial to our creative process. Why? Because early on, all of our movies suck. That’s a blunt assessment, I know, but I make a point of repeating it often, and I choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are. I’m not trying to be modest or self-effacing by saying this. Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so—to go, as I say, “from suck to not-suck.” This idea—that all the movies we now think of as brilliant were, at one time, terrible—is a hard concept for many to grasp. But think about how easy it would be for a movie about talking toys to feel derivative, sappy, or overtly merchandise-driven. Think about how off-putting a movie about rats preparing food could be, or how risky it must’ve seemed to start WALL-E with 39 dialogue-free minutes. We dare to attempt these stories, but we don’t get them right on the first pass. And this is as it should be. Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process—reworking, reworking, and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its throughline or a hollow character finds its soul.”
You don’t need to be a kid or have a kid to go see Pixar’s latest sensational film, Inside Out. It’s so good and has a depth that has you pondering its message long after you leave the theater.
But it started out sucking at first, too. The Pixar team kept at it, though, and ended up making remarkable art.
Start somewhere. Awful is a good place to begin. In fact, try to be as dreadful as you can, as laughably bad as you can imagine, just to take the pressure off.
Then see how you can make it just a little better.
Then keep going.
Meditations 4.36:
“Constant awareness that everything is born from change. The knowledge that there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it. All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it. You think the only seeds are the ones that make plants or children? Go deeper.”
“I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” –Thomas Jefferson
The reverse sear is my preferred steak grilling method.
Ideally, salt the steaks and let them chill in the refrigerator for a day or more. I then put them in the freezer for fifteen minutes before grilling to keep the inside of the meat from cooking too quickly.
Build a two-zone charcoal fire and put the cold steaks on the cooler side of the grill away from the coals. Open all the grill vents and leave the lid slightly ajar.
Flip the steaks after a few minutes and check the temperature with a meat thermometer.
When the internal temperature reaches about 100 degrees move the steaks to the hot side and sear them for a few minutes on each side, flipping often to get a uniform sear.
I cook mine to 125-130 and add a dollop of grass-fed butter before serving.
My favorite online resource for grilling is AmazingRibs.com.
Excellent Journey 