Samuel Johnson on Sleep

Samuel Johnson is a brilliant essayist and 1700s pop psychologist. I’m reading a selection of his essays from “The Rambler” and “The Idler” [Amazon link]. I re-wrote the following essays in my own words; the exercise helps me explore writing styles, voices and phrasing.

Here it is! A re-write of Samuel Johnson on Sleep, no. 32 in “The Idler”.

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People rarely think deeply about common activities. They confuse familiarity with knowledge, thinking they understand such things because they are used to them. But the thinking man looks deeper, knowing that the more he learns the less he understands.

Take, for example, sleep. A great part of our lives are spent sleeping. Every animal sleeps; some philosophers think vegetables sleep, too. Yet with something this important, we don’t know the cause, we can’t explain how falling asleep works and we’re unsure what precise benefits we receive from rest.

There are many theories, but none touch the truth. Sleep affects us all, the loud and the timid, the industrious and the lazy, the happy and the melancholy. Philosophers have long stated that all are equal in death. Sleep does the same: both the rich and poor succumb to its spell.

It is said that Alexander the Great thought himself a mortal only by his need for sleep. Whether he found it useful or not, to him it was a sign of human weakness: a body that needs sleep so regularly, yet dies so quickly.

No matter what emotional state we are in, no matter how passionate and absorbed we are, we eagerly await sleep. We will always retreat to sleep, casting aside a day good or bad, removing our senses and disabling our mental faculties.

Why then are we so greedy, ambitious and jealous? Even he who has everything is separated from his riches in slumber. Differences between us are more superficial than real, when the strong and timid, the famous and workaday, all desire that state of unconscious bliss.

We value sleep so highly that few are happy with its quality. Alexander would use wine as an aid, and almost every man has some trick to quicken its approach.

We spend little of life doing important things. Our time is passed in an equivocal fog. Daydreams, musings and idle thoughts disappear as quickly as they come, and soon the day is gone.

For some, their happiest moments are spent in solitary reflections, lost in their imagination, dreaming of untold riches and incomparable power, fancying a fascinating and luxurious life. For others, solitude is frightening, and they retreat to constant companionship. But the difference is slight; in solitude we wrap ourselves in our dreams, and in socializing we share them. The goal of both is to forget ourselves.

—

And here’s an original version.

The wisdom of Yoshida Kenko: on women’s laughter, painful hangovers and the 7 friends to avoid

It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met. — Yoshida Kenko

Essays in Idleness is a remarkable reminder of how things that are true stay true…even after 900 years.

Here were my favorite bits from his nearly-300 short essays:

I cannot bear the way people will make it their business to know all the details of some current rumour, even though it has nothing to do with them, and then proceed to pass the story on and do their best to learn more.

Desire is limitless, while money is finite. You cannot use limited resources to fulfill unlimited craving.

Aroma, for instance, is a mere transient thing, yet a whiff of delightful incense from a woman’s robes will always excite a man…

People will not take much issue with an invented tale if it shows them in a good light.

If someone new comes visiting, the boorish and insensitive will always manage to make the visitor feel ignorant by exchanging cryptic remarks about something they all know among themselves, some story or name, chuckling and exchanging knowing glances.

Even a deceitful imitation of wisdom will place you among the wise.

‘A beginner should not hold two arrows,’ his teacher told him. ‘You will be careless with the first, knowing you have a second. You must always be determined to hit the target with the single arrow you shoot, and have no thought beyond this.’

A man should be brought up so as to avoid being the butt of women’s laughter.

A man without stable means is a man whose heart is unstable.

One who considers himself superior through birth, skill or eminent forebears, even if he never expresses this, is full of error in his heart.

You should carefully consider which among the main things you want in life is the most important, and renounce all the others to dedicate yourself to that thing alone. Among the many matters that press in on us on any day, at any given moment, we must give ourselves to the most productive

The man who claims not to really understand is more likely to be thought a true master of his art.

It is very nice when a friend simply drops in, has a quiet talk with you, and then leaves. It is also wonderfully pleasing to receive a letter that simply begins, ‘I write because it’s been some time since I sent news,’ or some such.

On a moonlit night, a snowy morning, or beneath the flowering cherry trees, it increases all the pleasures of the moment to bring out the sake cups and settle down to talk serenely together over a drink.

Sigh:

I cannot understand why people will seize any occasion to immediately bring out the sake, delighting in forcing someone else to drink. […] A genteel man will quickly be transformed into a madman and start acting the fool; a vigorous, healthy fellow will before your very eyes become shockingly afflicted and fall senseless to the floor. What a thing to do, on a day of celebration! Right into the next day his head hurts, he can’t eat, and he lies there groaning with all memory of the previous day gone as if it were a former life. He neglects essential duties both public and private, with disastrous effects. It is both boorish and cruel to subject someone to this sort of misery. Surely a man who has had this bitter experience will be filled with regret and loathing.

Sorta get it:

The one thing a man should not have is a wife. No matter who the woman may be, you would grow to hate her if you lived with her and saw her day in day out, and the woman must become dissatisfied too. But if you lived separately and sometimes visited her, your feelings for each other would surely remain unchanged through the years. It keeps the relationship fresh to just drop in from time to time on impulse and spend the night.

There are seven types of people one should not have as a friend. The first is an exalted and high-ranking person. The second, somebody young. The third, anyone strong and in perfect health. The fourth, a man who loves drink. The fifth, a brave and daring warrior. The sixth, a liar. The seventh, an avaricious man. The three to choose as friends are – one who gives gifts, a doctor and a wise man.

A life hack:

One shouldn’t put new deer antler to the nose and sniff it. There is a tiny insect in it that will enter through the nose and devour the brain.

I’ve re-written a favorite Kenko passage here, if you’re curious.

The Scott Adams happiness formula, or life lessons from the Dilbert guy

dilbert-career-adviceI’m a big fan of Scott Adams and his irreverent, honest, quirky advice. I read his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big [Kindle] and wanted to share his happiness formula (in the fulfilling and deep sense of the word and not the light happiness crap peddled by self-help gurus):

  1. Eat right
  2. Exercise
  3. Get enough sleep
  4. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it)
  5. Work toward a flexible schedule
  6. Do things you can steadily improve at
  7. Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself)
  8. Reduce daily decisions to routine

Each item is — by itself — a life’s worth of challenges but taken together it’s practical and dare I say MECE? From personal experience #1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 work for me. I need to improve at #4, 7 and 8.

Enjoy!

PS Here are past items I wrote about Scott: on systems and on success

Bertrand Russell on the career treadmill

It’s a shame this book The Conquest of Happiness isn’t more popular. When I finish, I plan to re-read a few pages a day, like I did with Daily Rituals. Keeps it fresh.

Here’s the PDF and other versions.

Here’s Russell in his chapter on competition:

“It is very singular how little men seem to realize that they are not caught in the grip of a mechanism from which there is no escape, but that the treadmill is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them up to a higher level. I am thinking, of course, of men in higher walks of business, men who already have a good income and could, if they chose, live on what they have. To do so would seem to them shameful, like deserting from the army in the face of the enemy, though if you ask them what public cause they are serving by their work, they will be at a loss to reply as soon as they have run through the platitudes to be found in the advertisements of the strenuous life.”

David Brooks on the importance of character and the Greek versus Biblical moral codes

David Brooks is one of my favorite living nonfiction writers. His writing is a rare mix of humility, simplicity and breadth. He thinks deeply about what makes a good person and a good life, questions that are impossible to answer and invaluable to understand yet commonly ignored.

His op-ed The Service Patch is a particular favorite. To quote:

Many of these students seem to have a blinkered view of their options. There’s crass but affluent investment banking. There’s the poor but noble nonprofit world. And then there is the world of high-tech start-ups, which magically provides money and coolness simultaneously. […] In whatever field you go into, you will face greed, frustration and failure. You may find your life challenged by depression, alcoholism, infidelity, your own stupidity and self-indulgence. So how should you structure your soul to prepare for this? Simply working at Amnesty International instead of McKinsey is not necessarily going to help you with these primal character tests. […] It’s worth noting that you can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero. Understanding heroism and schmuckdom requires fewer Excel spreadsheets, more Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job.

It resonates with the deepest-felt dilemmas of my 20s, which themselves were the result of questions I ignored in my teens, in the pursuit of Ivy League acceptance letters and resume-varnishing job offers.

David Brooks gave the below talk on character at the Aspen Ideas Fest. I took extensive notes with a reminder to review them often. I wanted to share them with you.

Here is how I’d summarize the below

  1. we are mostly good people who aren’t taught about character and its importance in our lives
  2. the Greek character code is based on honor and strength and excellence
  3. the Biblical code is based on humility and love and kindness
  4. it’s the struggle with this duality that makes us who we are
  5. to build character, focus on the right habits, surround yourself with the right people and be organized
  6. religion plays an important role, giving us “awareness of something bigger than yourself”

And here are the full notes:

David Brooks — The Character Code @ Aspen Ideas Fest — REVIEW OFTEN

  • David grew up in Greenwich Village to liberal Jewish parents who hung out with hippies
  • he went to UChicago — “the school where fun goes to die”, a “Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students St. Thomas Aquinas”
  • “world full of good people who don’t have a good vocabulary for character”
  • imagine a world where you have the neutron, gravity, neutrino, but no system to fit them together
  • study asked college students to name a moral dilemma, most couldn’t; when pushed, fell back on a “motive-ism” — what feels right for me is right for me, what feels right for you is right for you
  • existence of uber moms — weigh less than their children; kids raised in this atmosphere are trained in everything, but the most important — character — they’re on their own
  • there’s a character code from history, that we’ve forgotten
    • (a lot of warfare history that I left out)
    • what motivated Athenian decisions?
      • grew up with ideology, inspired by Homer (they quoted him like Christians quote Bible today)
      • an Honor Code based on how transitory/fleeting life is, how deeply insignificant an individual life can be
      • you should fight against that insignificance, behave courageously to achieve eternal fame and glory
    • THE GREEK CODE — “Homeric man risks life to win honor”
      1. extremely competitive; if won Olympic medal, free meals for life
      2. asserts self, brags and shows off
      3. prowess, be excellent at something and display it to the world
      4. lack of self-doubt, very proud
    • the Homeric code, inspired many: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, American founders; Alexander Hamilton called desire for glory “the ruling passion of the noblest minds”
    • seen in sports heroism, all politicians, action movies — brave, strong, never self-doubt
  • there is another code — Moses and the Bible, Jesus
    • Moses is meekest man on Earth
    • bad public speaker, quiet shepherd
    • when anointed by God, he said “you’ve got the wrong guy”
    • Jesus, sermon on the Mount, turns every Greek virtue on its head
    • loftiness of spirit by caring for downtrodden
    • achieve greatness by demonstrating meekness
    • power through dependence on God
    • strength through vulnerability
    • wisdom by accepting ignorance
  • GREEK versus BIBLICAL model
  • Western Civilization tries to fuse the two
    • chivalry — Greek emphasis on honor with Christian emphasis on love
    • Abraham Lincoln personifies — ambition with submission
    • George H.W. Bush — ran for President, but raised not to talk about himself, when he did so in campaigning, his Mom would call him and say, “George, you’re talking about yourself”
  • Joseph Soleveitchik and the two Adams (for more, see Wikipedia), the majestic versus the covenantal; both willed by God, competitive versus cooperative
  • in merging these two strains, we’ve lost them both
    • first, we don’t teach Western Civ anymore
    • lost touch with Heroic code because it’s elitist
    • lost touch with Biblical code because we’re uncomfortable with sin, assumption “that we have it baked into us”
  • “good people who are a little formless”
  • people living this duality
    • Atul Gawande in a famously self-confident profession (surgery), but incredible motivation/modesty to see unpleasant facts; does something daring but starting from feeling of weakness
    • Jim Collins — sort of a moral philosopher, “always celebrating a certain sort of hero”
      • celebrates the quiet unassuming CEO — boring, anal types
      • promotes a sort of moral code — diligent, prepared, Level 5 leaders “extreme personal humility with extreme personal will”
    • Clayton Christensen — spent an hour each day asking, “what is my life about”
  • humility is: not thinking too highly OR too much about yourself, understanding your own weakness and that life is about struggle
  • how do we instill these qualities?
    • “you can’t change your mind and then your behavior, if we did that, New Years resolutions would work”
    • get the little habits right; when they asked Greg Maddux “how’d your day go”, he responded “67 of 73” (as in, 67 pitches left his hand how he wanted, had no control after that)
    • being organized, neat
    • being around exemplars; we are mimic machines — baby at 43 minutes old wagged her tongue in response to a wagging tongue
    • we’re formed by institutions
  • religion has an important role to play
    • grace, gratitude, awareness of something bigger than yourself
    • St Augustine in Confessions said he spent 4 years beating himself up for stealing an apple when he was 14
    • generally most impressive characters he knew were either deeply religious or grew up in religious atmosphere