#496 Who knows where life will go?
Better enjoy today’s show.
After all, who knows where life will go?
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#92 The true purpose of memory
ByLukasWisdom doesn’t come from experience. It comes from reflecting on experience.
— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) December 11, 2022
Between ages 25 and 75, the correlation between age and wisdom is zero.
Gaining insight and perspective is not about the number of years you've lived. It's about the number of lessons you've learned. pic.twitter.com/8wbKsCMkEDMemory isn’t an objective account of the past – and that’s not its purpose either.
Memory stores the lessons we extract from life experience. And to do so, it modifies, adds, subtracts, highlights, and hides.
Hot soup burns my tongue – next time, I’ll remember the pain, but not if it was tomato soup or chicken soup. And I’ll remember to wait a couple of minutes before having the first spoon.
Experience lived. Irrelevant info deleted. Lesson learned. Memory created.
My country gets invaded – and that causes so much pain, I won’t just deliver an objective account of what happened: I’ll make sure to tell everyone who the evil guys are too.
Experience lived. Story modified. Lesson learned. Memory created.
I eat the most delicious dessert at a Mexico City restaurant – that’s the memory I’m going to tell my friends about, not which glass of dessert wine I had with it.
Experience lived. Dessert highlighted. Lesson learned. Memory created.
You’re going to make memories anyway. Which lessons do you want to learn?
#541 This prevents you from creating the future you desire
ByLukasDo you want to fear a future you resent, or focus on a future you create in the present?
Do you even want to know what happens next, if all it does is blind you from what happens right now?
Do you want to focus on a future you fear, if it prevents you from building what’s important, right now, right here?
#72 Contrast
ByLukasWithout sadness, how do I know I’m happy?
Without happiness, how do I know I’m sad?
Without anger, how do I know I’m grateful?
Without gratitude, how do I know I’m angry?
Without pain, how do I know what pleasure feels like?
Without pleasure, how do I know I’m in pain?
Without bad moments, how can I appreciate the good ones?
Without good moments, what gets me through the bad ones?
Contrast.
#443 Be consistent with the how, not the what
ByLukasIf you’re curious about one topic, you can stay curious, even if your interests change over time.
If you’re kind to one person, you can stay kind when talking to other people.
If you showed leadership in your last job, you can show leadership in your new job.
You can be consistent in how you do things, without having to be consistent in what you do.
#194 Satisfaction is an illusion
ByLukasWe get hungry and look for food. Then we get hungry again.
We get thirsty and look for water. Then we’re thirsty again.
We want to create art and learn how to sing. Then we want to create more and learn how to draw.
Full satisfaction with our life as it is is an illusion. Desire will always be there, even if we think we’ve reached all our goals.
Without a gap between what we do and what we want to do, what we have and what we want, who we are and who we want to be, life becomes meaningless.
With that knowledge, how can we still be fulfilled?
The fulfillment formula may help:
Regardless of outcomes and results, are the majority of your daily actions in alignment with your purpose, values, and the identity you want to forge?
#40 Pushing a destructive frontier
ByLukas5 billion years ago, our solar system didn’t exist in its current form – but the laws of our universe already held the promise that one day, an earth like ours would revolve around a sun.
That earth has been revolving around the sun long before any human started observing planetary orbits and realized we’re not the center of the universe.
Animals, plants, mountains and oceans have instinctively dealt with the law of gravity long before an apple fell on Newton’s head.
Energy and mass have been two sides of the same coind long before Einstein proposed a formula for mass-energy equivalence (E = mc²).
Knowledge: invented or discovered?
More importantly: what do we do with all that knowledge – and the power it give us?
100 years ago, nuclear weapons didn’t exist yet – but the atomic building blocks and reactions making it possible have always been hidden inside the earth and the universe.
50 years ago, the internet wasn’t “invented” yet – but the concept of an internet has always been possible.
Today, general artificial intelligence don’t exist yet. Yet it seems that the laws of the universe have always made developing artificial life a possibility – even if it means biological life becomes obsolete.
Do we pursue power
Lukas Van Vyve
persistently pushing the frontier
even if we run the risk
that we destroy everything we hold dear?