The Best Minute: On thinking for yourself, being excellent, and being afraid
2 QUOTES FROM OTHERS
I. Alan Jacobs on the myth of thinking for yourself:
“To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable. Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social. Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said. And when people commend someone for “thinking for herself” they usually mean “ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of.”
II. Karen Swallow Prior on being an excellent person:
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; “these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions”; we are what we repeatedly do.”
2 IDEAS FROM ME
I. If you’re afraid to tell anyone about it before you do it, it’s probably a bad idea.
II. If you’re afraid to tell anyone about it primarily because you don’t want others to know if you failed, you should probably tell someone about it. You’ll likely find the courage to try it if you know you’ve got a friend who is behind you.
1 RANDOM FACT
Jesus most likely wasn’t a carpenter.
In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, we are told that Jesus was a carpenter in most English translations. This word translated as carpenter comes from the Greek word tekton which literally means craftsman or builder. Carpenter could certainly fit that description, but Jesus’ context shows it’s not the understanding for him. In the region where Jesus lived and grew up, the vast majority of homes were and structures built with stone. That’s not to say he never used wood, but attempting to make a living as a carpenter in a region where trees were (and still are) relatively scarce would have been quite the challenge.
1 QUESTION TO LEAVE YOU WITH
What is one thing you enjoy doing so much that whether you succeed or fail at it, it doesn’t matter to you? Trying doing more of that thing.
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