Your essay is comprehensive and thorough without ever once dragging - I could see multiple longer essays as offshoots from this one and I would read them all! It also makes me want to be more curious about how I used to play as a kid vs how kids play nowadays, as well ask all my friends what they played! Being a Gen X-er, a lot of us were just outside wreacking havoc. Great essay!
This was amazing. One of the most inspiring pieces of the Symposium.
"“helpfulness,” which—are my compasses spinning, or does that also sound an awful lot like “usefulness” to you, too?"
I've been reading a lot of the Work Symposium today (while on a gig actually haha) and because of the sheer volume of content sometimes my eyes start scanning rather than reading, resulting in interesting discoveries. This one was that I read "helpfulness" as "usefulness" the first time and wouldn't have noticed that it was "helpfulness" if you hadn't called it out.
"one’s own useless (because miraculous) existence."
This is everything. I don't have more to add to it, it says it all, but I became extremely less stressed out and scared by life once I learned there's nothing inherently useful about it. It just is and that's okay, so it's up to me how I want to experience it.
So right, Lyle, I don't want to know myself, like in the Latin, nosce te ipsum. There should be plenty of mystery in the multitude contained, that each of us has, many things, including hopes, dreams, and ambitions we don't have yet or will pick up again. Sometimes, a toy train is just a toy train.
You remined me, that one of the least designed toys is the big empty cardboard box which could become other things, like rocketships.
I love it, this feels heretical, which says something about the society that makes it feel that way. I'm sometimes embarrassed to tell other people if I took a day during the week just to relax and read and meditate. I wish that were something to celebrate as balance, not hide or feel ashamed of.
Your essay is comprehensive and thorough without ever once dragging - I could see multiple longer essays as offshoots from this one and I would read them all! It also makes me want to be more curious about how I used to play as a kid vs how kids play nowadays, as well ask all my friends what they played! Being a Gen X-er, a lot of us were just outside wreacking havoc. Great essay!
"Mindfulness will decrease your anxiety, help you accomplish more, and make you better at math!!"
"That's okay; I'll do it anyway."
***
A thought-provoking essay, Lyle. Thank you.
This was amazing. One of the most inspiring pieces of the Symposium.
"“helpfulness,” which—are my compasses spinning, or does that also sound an awful lot like “usefulness” to you, too?"
I've been reading a lot of the Work Symposium today (while on a gig actually haha) and because of the sheer volume of content sometimes my eyes start scanning rather than reading, resulting in interesting discoveries. This one was that I read "helpfulness" as "usefulness" the first time and wouldn't have noticed that it was "helpfulness" if you hadn't called it out.
"one’s own useless (because miraculous) existence."
This is everything. I don't have more to add to it, it says it all, but I became extremely less stressed out and scared by life once I learned there's nothing inherently useful about it. It just is and that's okay, so it's up to me how I want to experience it.
So right, Lyle, I don't want to know myself, like in the Latin, nosce te ipsum. There should be plenty of mystery in the multitude contained, that each of us has, many things, including hopes, dreams, and ambitions we don't have yet or will pick up again. Sometimes, a toy train is just a toy train.
You remined me, that one of the least designed toys is the big empty cardboard box which could become other things, like rocketships.
I love it, this feels heretical, which says something about the society that makes it feel that way. I'm sometimes embarrassed to tell other people if I took a day during the week just to relax and read and meditate. I wish that were something to celebrate as balance, not hide or feel ashamed of.