I learned about the desert. I didn’t read about it, I visited it. I went to the Sahara. I was where the silk roads ended, the Atlantic last shop. Remember when you wanted what you have now? I remembered posting that quote once on my socials and people came back thanking me for it. The desert is silent. I was celebrating my best friend’s birthday, and after the drums and the laughs, in the night time if you try to listen, you can almost hear the ground breathing, moving underneath, roots to the heart of Earth. The desert is wise. Imagine years, decades, thousands of years of dunes changing sides, spending time in its own knowledge and fluid lands, hiding the steps of millions of dromedaries, together with the joy, deceptions and heartbreaks that people leave behind. How many secrets the desert holds and doesn’t tell? The desert is also full of surprises. After a bonfire, we hiked and sat on top of a very tall dune into the small hours from midnight. The silence joined me. I raised my eyes, I finally laid back, everything my eyeballs could see were the stars dotted in mass lighting through domes of sand and subtle wind. I lost track of time when our campfire shut off on the horizon and it was us with the moon. Van Gogh said that the night is more alive and more coloured than the day, and I saw it. As if the sky was the theater and desert was acting like a berber pharmacy opening its groaning, protesting metal curtains, showing us its values not in the morning but right after dusk.

The desert teaches you more about water than the ocean ever could. I thought about everything then, the turns of my life, decisions I took and felt proud of, decisions I lamented. I thought about my family, my partner, my friends, the things I left behind, the game of chances, my health, and the art of living. Remember when you wanted what you have now? Now it was too late (or early) in the day but I thanked back. I don’t know what effect this writing has on anyone. I know what it does to me. I was sitting there with people I consider my chosen family. Three hours and a half later I woke up from my tent to run back to see the sunrise. I felt hungover, like trash, but the future me will also be thankful for it. Because moments you lose like that are called “Imitation Art,” something that can’t be timeless like a painting, but rather joined in time, like going to a play and seeing a dance happen. An essence bound in place that if you don’t see it at that point, you just lost it.

I sat on the same dune and I saw the sun rise in the midst of aggressive cold wind. Wind that knew its time was late to hide from the Sun. I sat there until the old sand stayed in place and the heat welcomed my face. It was just me and silence again. Curiously, the friend I was celebrating doesn’t like reading, and he asked me how different my life would be if I didn’t read. I wanted to say that if I didn’t read I wouldn’t be able to live a life on top of a dune at midnight in the Sahara desert, but I was just remembering.

Hunger by Knut Hamsun - “I stuck my forefinger in my mouth and took to sucking on it. Something began stirring in my brain…what if I gave a bite?…I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth together. I jumped up. I was finally awake. A little blood trickled from my finger, and I licked it off as it came. It didn’t hurt, the wound was nothing really, but I was at once brought back to my senses.” Most of the notes I highlighted from this book are about the prose of pain from a man losing his senses. An individual that shifts from the ordinary day to day to the depths of saying no to everything, to society, to rationality, to God. Published in 1890, Hamsun describes the unconscious life of the mind of a writer who becomes disoriented and poor by choice in Kristiania (Now Oslo), trying to respond to one main question: What happens on the other side of someone when he does not want to succeed, when he wants to fail? An art that is the direct expression of the effort to express itself. In other words, an art of hunger: an art of need, of emptiness, of desire… of giving one’s own life with the knowledge that there are no right answers. The lenses and experiences that the character suffers throughout his journey, how people treat him and his day to day feel like wanting to walk blocks of long distance just because you want to see what sense there is on the other side. There’s rejection, there’s love, there’s mercy but also hopelessness. And even though it was written over a century ago, the realities are strikingly similar today. I feel it more deeply in every homeless person I see on the street. I can feel the hunger. I can feel the rejection. This book makes you peer into the darkness the character created, and makes you come on the other side just in time to realise that the goal was not resolution, but the constant haunting of it.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - It was COVID time, and the first place I settled when I moved to London was Primrose Hill. I just saw an empty street and a front row of houses from the flat. The countdown to a full week indoors to avoid infections was driving me crazy. I can’t remember most of that time. The sameness of the space stole my clock. Time only helps you move on if you have new memories—COVID was the ultimate stealer of them. COVID was time’s mistress. Though you’d wonder how we avoid prison and yet reminisce about the feeling of escaping isolation again. Before the Big Ben, before the West End, before the streets with queens and kings’ names stood Primrose Hill with its breathing colored houses and infinite rows of windows with frames in every colour. I stepped out with my heart pounding, and my breath shortened. I turned, and there was the first blue plaque I saw on a Victorian wall. The English Heritage made the case to link in these plaques “the people from the past with the buildings of the present.” The address was N3 Chalcot Square and the plaque said “Sylvia Plath 1932-1963 Poet lived here 1960-1961.” That’s a young life. She lived in two addresses in Primrose Hill. I found out that she killed herself there. Depression is also a mistress. It doesn’t take place, time or face. It’s just in your head. I’ve been there to different degrees. We can’t understand it really, but I just read The Bell Jar, and I empathise. Plath described it as taking a collection of episodes from her life and throwing them down on paper. She just had two babies and a surgery and needed money. She justified to her mom that she needed to write a best-seller. There’s a debate that if the book resonates with you then you’re in emotional danger. Whereas I find that there’s no wasted word on it. Your energy goes with the writing, your mood too. This book made me jump from feeling love and rush to darkness and a feeling of unfitting. It’s a space where lines of gorgeous prose cliff into hills of despair and escape, “I saw their mouths going up and down without a sound, as if they were sitting on the deck of a departing ship, stranding me in the middle of a huge silence.” This is a work of art that will be hard to compare to other classics of literature, and rather a classic on its own.

The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead by Warren Berger - I first heard of it from Daniel Pink’s post of Six human skills AI still can’t replace and, after reading, I will add this book to the list of those I recommend to anyone. I am in this stage of skepticism in how slow we are moving if we are not in the tech industry, but then I resonate with Pink’s statement: when answers become cheap, curiosity becomes priceless. And when I finished this book I felt I was summarising the best and worst conversations I’ve had in my life and they all fell to one important pattern: the quality of the questions we ask. If you’re not listening, it’s because you’re not asking the right question—so it is for learning, creating, leading and connecting with others. We have so much room to be more curious. To enjoy more. To live more. If you are not growing, it is because you are missing the bar of making your questions more open, more daring, more future or past-driven (or sometimes just crazy). ‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man’ said George Bernard Shaw. You have to challenge yourself, you gotta ask the big questions: What would I try if I knew I could not fail? What is the worst that could happen? Why do I believe what I believe? What if the opposite is true? When have I felt the most happy and why? Since I read this book I feel like the real world is a big chat that I am prompting in front of me. It’s like a bible of wisdom in multiple areas of life and my most memorable parts were related to creativity and connecting. On the latter, I tend to like giving advice without realising that it’s useless because people’s lives are realities I don’t live in, and I learned a much better way to have a conversation because of this book. Some of my other favourites in this topic are The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef and Think Again by Adam Grant.

Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk - If someone asks me for a memorable fiction I’ve read I’d say Fight Club for sure. But I’ve avoided reading more of Palahniuk just because it makes me uncomfortable and feels transgressive. Although I have to say this is one of the most impressive books about writing I’ve ever read. Even as I haven’t explored writing fiction, every tip and every story in this book is unusual and worth highlighting. Styles, scenes, chapters, tension, lack of interest, lack of hooks, pains in the dialogue—Chuck goes through all of it and dissects his best writing. He talks about Fight Club from a lens that I haven’t seen and makes me understand why I liked the book so much and how I could take some of his feedback and what to do if I was his student. One of my favorite points was in building up texture in writing and spending time in minimalism, going deep in ideas before moving on, saying the same things over and over, and then building up dialogues in a completely different way that I pictured dialogues could be. But in my drive for philosophy my favorite bit came towards the end when Palahniuk explains the importance of collecting stories “because our existence is a constant flow of the impossible, the implausible, the coincidental… We’re trained to love in constant denial of the miraculous,” Chuck continues saying “and it’s only by telling our stories that we get any sense of how extraordinary human existence actually can be.” This is a book that I will probably be rereading a few times in the year. The last time I read a book that built the foundations on my writing this way was Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This book stays in my bookshelf for a refresh on perspectives about writing that are worth considering.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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Tails of winter and the earth waits pregnant for spring. It’s calling you as you sit on a bench and the sun is seeping grounding in your skin. There are three hundred people walking in the park.

Someone rushing on a bike, someone slowly walking through. Two couples with strollers chatting along and a baby crying. Two others with their dogs, one of them you have never seen before, he stares at the ducks who glare at the horizon looking for food by the hand of the next tourist or victim. A stranger is walking fast & smoking a cigarette. A girl with a red scarf standing by, waiting for someone. Birds chase the distance, some landing and speeding, chirping, and many more flying. Flocks of birds. There is a man in his forties sitting under a tree contemplating the sun breaking the clouds. You’d rather see the clouds breaking the sun. There’s a perfectly looking pond, a bright blue place, you can notice everything that touches it. It brings waves in slow fashion giving space to the sky, swans and geese. Making the horizon are the bridges and buildings that you’ve always seen but you never really appreciated. They stack brick, stones and cobblestones like siblings. How long have they been there? What have they held? Whose story do they tell? A leaf falls and grounds with one of those colours in a finesse that two people won’t ever describe the same. Avenues of grass and trees grow and call you.

A soft wind seems to tell you something. Someone is reading C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves. The book is open in the middle and you remember: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.” You wonder when was the last time you felt that way? You wonder about the first time those words were read too. You turn around and you see a runner, running, struggling, a last mile, and then another one. An old lady is laughing, staring at her life partner, her friend. Is she wearing her favourite knitted sweater? Another younger woman is silent sitting over a blanket with daisies painted in white and yellow. A man comes across, hands in his pockets, thoughtful. Everyone you see moving contrasts a game of shades and lights and shades again from trees and the romance of fragile branches. A boy is excited, your heart kindles and remembers. You see someone else going sad, but no one is crying today. You look beyond and there’s a fountain making water levitate and move miles away. You remember the last time you left home. “Reach across again, here’s where heaven starts” you tell yourself singing Mumford & Sons. Your skin shivers as you see yourself from the outside contemplating you.

You’ve seen it in the sketchbook and something close to it in real life. The truth is that there are no two similar moments, no two that you see the same. That was the last time those three hundred people and animals and trees and weather were together in that park, at that moment of the day on that date. Van Gogh knew that a colour changes depending on what sits beside it. It’s also the same for you, because you won’t be that person again.

That was the last time you savoured the song like it.

That person you were with will never meet you again the same way.

Those words will be read differently next time.

Thoughts will be unrepeatable.

It’s likely that you have changed some of your beliefs since then. That was a snapshot. You carried the past then, it has been with you all the time, but you built on it now.

Oswald Spengler described this as “Imitation Art,” something that can’t be timeless like a painting, but rather joined in time, like going to a play and seeing a dance happen. An essence bound in place that if you don’t see it at that point, you just lost it. It was The Nutcracker bringing you to life, it was Vivaldi’s Spring 1 alive in the room. Maybe you might catch the next show, but it won’t be the same. Yes, it can be the same dancer, it can be the same orchestra, it’s the same stage, but something changed, the artist changed, the people you were with are not there anymore, you changed, everything is different.

It’s hard to accept it but we often feel the need to “certify” our experiences, as Walker Percy points in The Moviegoer. Somehow living day to day not appreciating our experiences and feeling an emptiness inside of us, undervaluing, lacking something, even to the point of leaving our neighborhoods. But if we see this place in a movie or called out by someone else, then it becomes a place possible to live. Like a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

As if having them on a big screen can make us finally appreciate the present as an act of art, like a walk, a guest, a conversation, even with yourself.

The way of the artist and the way of the mystic are similar, but the mystic lacks craft. You are in the craft now, that is mystic on its own. You don’t need to “certify” it. That’s why it’s said that in moments of great joy, we are so aware that no attempt is made to compare its experience to other experiences, it is in the present and only in the present that you live.

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She visited Japan for months to study the language, a hard one to learn. In her second period, they gave her a volume-sized research to interpret—something from a PhD, a brick-like slab of paper. A friend of mine she is, and her task was insanely hard, and as she read the text and mumbled the first characters known, she complained almost immediately. The teacher turned to her and pushed back with one of the most fascinating words I’ve learned recently: Ganbatte, to do your best, to work hard, to keep trying.

I don’t know if it is a word solely in Japan or if it relates to expressions in Eastern cultures. I don’t know whether it’s Confucius speaking to us across the centuries, spreading philosophy across the ages, or whether there’s an East-West difference in perspective. I don’t take it further to understand where it’s coming from, nor did I ask her what happened next. I settled on it. I just know that we need more of that.

Ganbatte, to try hard. Ganbatte, to find ways to figure it out. Especially on the things that we are passionate about. Things that we come back to regularly, even in our highest, even in our lowest (especially in our lowest). Because hard acts will always bring so much reward.

Learning something new.

Going the extra mile.

Doing the right thing, even more when no one is watching.

One example is all the wonderful things you get in reading a long and hard book. On the one hand, you’re finding yourself learning and exploring what a 20 second video can’t give you: patience, dialogues, deep ideas, places and historical figures you didn’t know about. On the other hand, you get to capture your own essence of what the author meant, building your own wisdom and creating your own debate, finding yourself in pages that are long and complicated on their own, while searching for the tools you have to make it through.

Ganbatte to read the footnotes that couldn’t fit in the large text. Ganbatte to debate the sources. Yes, argue with the writing. Yes, have that discussion. After all, learning to listen to someone who is different from you is also hard. Opening your mind to new ideas and different realities, to a better path—maybe harder but better.

Ganbatte means to learn how to look back… So you can know how to move forward. I found these in what I read this month: a biography of the last English man who believed in the providential duty of the British Empire, and tried hard to save the Western world from fascism, and won. I also read about Hemingway, who used to read his writing 206 times before publishing, achieving immortality, this time translating the confessions from fiestas at night into fiction, along with some favorite ideas on writing. I also read of an incredibly smart woman that built perspectives from trying hard to have something and not achieve it, using one of the games in which uncertainty is the command: poker.

Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts - 1,000 pages chronicling a man of grandiose vision and a sense of duty and honor for the English people. We could argue that being born as an aristocrat can take you far in life, but Churchill just reminds us of the uncommon example, doing the most you can with everything you have. Born when Queen Victoria was alive, at sixteen he told a friend that “London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall on me to save the capital and save the empire.” So strong in his convictions and belief of himself, that not much later, he enlisted himself as a British soldier and war correspondent, then coming back and rising in the House of Commons as an MP, and later cycling in and out of high government positions… finally becoming a Prime Minister twice, the first at sixty-five during the Second World War, exactly what he has dreamed for himself half a century earlier. He was a mortal, a human being, an ordinary man, yet he never decided to have a day idle. Never a skipped experience, never a sense of wintering—there’s not a page in this book where you find that he woke up one morning and decided not to push himself with contagious energy. What’s more is realising that much of his reputation came from being a writer, publishing thirty-seven books with 6.1 million words, more than Shakespeare and Dickens combined, and over 5 million words in speeches that steered the nation and even the world with hope, especially speeches made during the war. “A speech by our beloved Winston Churchill is quite perfect,” wrote Anne Frank in her diary in 1944. Churchill was sometimes also controversial and contradictory in his views on liberty, India, philosemitism, eugenics, and even the aristocrats themselves, but this book tells the story, success, failures and learnings of someone who left a permanent mark on European history. There is so much to learn from a polymath who, as his daughter Mary pointed, saw “events and people as on a stage,” constantly telling the British people that they have been there before in the past, asking himself “what must Britain do now?” He was a man the British people ended up trusting for the premiership in 1940 not because he was right in the past, but because they believed he had been consistently true to his beliefs. There are so many things I learned from this book about British identity, global history and a deep insight into both World Wars, but also about how far one’s own willingness can mark your contributions in life and the path you end up taking.

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway - Fiesta is a novel about someone who only wanted what they couldn’t have. Surrounding cynical, complex and unresolved characters, describing the fictional experiences of an expat in Paris in the 1920s, and the relationships with his friends living their own challenges: impossible love, jealousy, irony, emotional fallouts and a lot of drinking. It is said that Hemingway wrote this in allusion to his own life, as part of America’s “Lost Generation,” or those who came of age after the First World War, giving a hollow meaning to purpose, patriotism, and heroism. Instead, choosing a life away from America, filled with parties, alcohol, and affairs. A sign of a fleeting and less judgmental life, yet facing the same questions over and over: what is immoral, what is not, and could falling in love all the time mean that your values are dead? As they travel to Pamplona for the San Fermin fiesta, Hemingway describes every setting and every character with great passion, but with so much conflict… that you finish the book wanting more. “It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening.” A highly recommended read to confront human nature and the decisions we make and want to avoid making.

On Writing by Ernest Hemingway - “You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless—there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing… For Christ sake write and don’t worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of a masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit.” wrote Hemingway between 1929 and 1934 in letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald who was publishing Tender is the Night. This book is something rather unusual and disrupts one of the things Hemingway was against doing, which is writing about writing. Author Larry W. Phillips spent much of his valuable time collecting Hemingway ideas on the subject from his novels, stories, letters to editors, friends, fellow artists… It’s almost as if Hemingway wrote and talked about writing as he was crafting a novel about it, from his working habits, advice to writers, knowing what to leave out, and the writer’s life, who suffers “like a bastard when you don’t write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.” This book feels timely as I always find the same demons myself as an amateur writer, but it’s also a book that makes you feel you’re wearing the shoes of a human who won the Nobel Prize for literature just doing the hard thing and achieving it, over and over. There is a mystery in all great writing that Hemingway explains no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done, “it continues and it is always valid” he says, “each time you re-read you see or learn something new.” And this is what I feel when I read these capsules from his writing and notes, to Harvey Breit, Fitzgerald, Charles Scribner Jr., and many other journalists.

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke - All the talent in the world doesn’t matter if a player can’t execute, and execution doesn’t mean having a flawless shot, but rather something earlier—and even more fundamental—that is differentiating the things that you can control from those you can’t. The conscious certainty vs the hidden unknowns. Therefore, the quality of our abilities can show us over and over that the best decision doesn’t yield the best outcome every time, and Duke shows us that her life experiences are an incredible example. This is one of those books that you want to keep for reference and maybe read once every now and then. Drawing the differences through game theory between two games: chess and poker, she explains how the first one relies on having a clear problem and all the probable solutions on the table board—a fiction. Whereas the second shows you the deceptions, the bluffs, the surprises, and the uncertainty that can explain real life. Every decision we make is a bet against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing, and through a series of realisations she walks us through meaningful perspectives like how most of our happiness mistakenly derives from comparisons instead of our own needs, or how we build the wrong beliefs and stick to them, or how emotions derail us, or how, in the words of Aldous Huxley, our experiences end up being not what happen to us, but what we make out of them. Could you be creating your own chess board? From the environment you create when you learn something new—or challenge it—to how you reinterpret the outcomes, to whom you follow online and whether unintentionally they all reinforce you with the same opinion. We all have something to challenge about ourselves. Otherwise, as she asks of the risk that I’ve seen so many be in, “what forty-year-old thinks everything they believed at twenty is still correct?” She brings so many good tools to help us discern between the quality of a decision and the results of that decision. Learning about them helped me feel more humble and connected to the choices I make and those from the people surrounding me.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

Arthur Brooks points that the way for us to live a full life is by embracing problems between complicated and complex. The first one comes to clarity, the second separates you from it.

A complicated problem is that which is very hard to solve, Brooks says, but once you solve it, it’s static and you can do it again and again and again. Think about a math problem, the making of a table, accounting, a jet engine. These are how and what problems, solvable and finite.

A complex problem, on the other hand, could be super easy to understand but impossible to solve. “They’re not solvable, but livable,” says Brooks. Think relationships, marriage, happiness, spirituality. There are too many unknowns in them. They evolve. For example, you understand what is to love and to be loved, but you will never really solve it. They are passed from parents to offspring. The long run is what they’re here for.

A complicated problem gives you learning. A complex problem gives you meaning. When you use the tools of the first to solve the second, you lose a sense of reality and therefore your meaning.

“I really do feel like I’m not living a real life,” says one of Brooks students to interviews he has been making for a recent book he wrote. “Are you fully alive when you get up and the first thing you do is you pick up your phone, which is by the side of your bed, and check in with a universe that’s being mediated through the small screen,” says Brooks, “and then you do your work on Zoom, and then your friends are on social media, and your dating is on the app, and your progress is made through your score on your gaming, and your relationships are stripped of their humanity because you’re looking at pornography?”

We are spending a historic amount of time alone. Our homes are so much more comfortable than they used to be. We want to go out less and share less. We celebrate when friends cancel plans. We can’t get enough from the greatest and most individual devices: our phones, our headphones, our TVs. It takes us 99.9% less time to open our phones and like an Instagram post than to call someone to celebrate them. We don’t say hi to strangers anymore, real conversations last just more than a few words.

We are getting used to diminishing life’s greatest complexities. When we see the whole world as a math problem, we bring our inevitable desire to find a variable, equate it to something else. We rush things without a clear understanding of what they mean. It’s not finding knowledge that we care about, but wisdom to face the challenges. And you can’t find wisdom without complexity. How do you grow without a real sense of curiosity?

How do you learn to listen to someone else without your well-trained short attention?

How do you appreciate your surroundings if you don’t have time to dream and to wonder?

How do you learn to love and to be loved?

Joseph Campbell said that people are not looking for the meaning of life, they are looking for the feeling of being alive. And if you’re not fully alive, the reason for that is because you’re living a simulated life.

Instead, look for the opposite and disconnect. Get bored. Be uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean spending an hour without your phone. It means stopping and asking yourself, “who do I want to be and what do I want to know?” The more we chase these sorts of questions, the more complex it gets, the more we discover ourselves.

Find uncertainty. Choose the thing that makes you nervous. Go when you’re not ready.

I started this year saying more yes to social plans around me, complex scenarios, no matter the extra budget, against my own will. To be more social, even in the most random opportunities, even when I don’t feel like it.

Am I ready for these? I say to myself. Do I have a repertoire of pop-culture knowledge to talk about? What was the last thing I read that I can share? Where am I in my life? I don’t know. I don’t know any of these things—I just go.

I started to have fun with people playing new board or human-sized games for the first time. I’ve been in awkward conversations and found silence to be a great way to also say something.

One day I said yes to a hike with friends in Britain’s countryside, a place that I didn’t feel physically prepared for. We saw the beauty of the green, and felt the freshness of the air. We crossed farms and saw wonderful animals like sheep and horses. We went and sneaked through isolated and quaint neighbourhoods. We saw people pass by, and everyone said hi. Dogs ran across and surrounded us, then dutifully went back to their owners. We got entangled in wild puddles of water, we sank our feet, we were careful to not fall on them. We crossed bridges and took turns on those that were closed. We went through small alleyways to find ways through.

That day was supposed to rain, and there wasn’t a single drop; we actually had Sun and wind, a beautiful January winter, Britain calling. At the end my legs ached from exhaustion. But we survived. I felt alive.

It reminds me of the Jim Carrey movie Yes, Man. Where, at some point towards the climax, the girl reminds him that “the world’s a playground. You know that when you are a kid, but somewhere along the way everyone forgets it.” The difference is in how you face your next challenge.

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Sources

[1] The Tim Ferriss Show w/ Arthur Brooks - Episode 841
[2] The Gray Area with Sean Illing w/Derek Thompson - The cost of spending time alone
[3] The Lyon’s Tracker to Life - Boyd Varty

I was very excited to post the eleven books that changed my 2025 in one of my last reading lists. A summary and a closure. I gained a lot of traction and meaningful conversations in 2025 by repeating my goals every month: publishing my reading list and sharing short essays. Sometimes easy, sometimes hard and unknown paths that get enabled just by trying to understand the creative work—that which seems to become available to you or “pending” to do the more you dive into it, action by action, challenge by challenge. Like passages or turns that are hidden and waiting for the ideal time to flourish. Like seeds in your mind.

In The Daily Laws, Robert Greene wrote that people get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life. It is through the creative work that I feel that I have grown. I remember every single occasion I’ve written and published my monthly reading list. My mind changed in every one of them. I felt like a different person after posting about those books, and then I felt like a better one the next month.

What creating does is set me in a state of joy and excitement by telling me how little I truly know, and how mysterious the world remains. It makes me work hard to develop independence in my thinking and patience to make things flourish and ground in silent stillness. The real change happens when you take those things back to the world.

Writing isn’t the only path to this feeling. I’d encourage anyone to do any type of creative activity that makes their mind enter a flow state. To materialise ideas in any shape or form, to get lost in the process. In creating something hard, or harder than our capabilities, we attain something greater in ourselves. I hope you enjoy my reading list this month!

A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living by Diane Osbon - If books are meant to teach wisdom and not facts, this is that book. Campbell is best known for The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which has profoundly influenced many storytellers—even Star Wars was made under this premise. This book collects lectures from an intense month-long seminar and links his most relevant writings, offering fascinating insights on how to live better, from becoming an individual with spiritual fulfilment, taking action and living in wonder, understanding philosophy, art, psychology, Christianity, Buddhism… At some point, he mentions coincidentally meeting a young John Steinbeck and changing his perspective on writing, that’s crazy! I read once that from your own mental level, you can only stretch to comprehend just a bit beyond yourself. When we encounter movement leaders, historical figures, or “enlightened” ones, it’s because they stretched and changed their beliefs significantly upward. Joseph Campbell is one of those people, and in this book, he shows us that the separations and limitations exist only in our own minds.

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov - “Man only exists insofar as he is separated from his surroundings.” Absent-minded, wronged, unaware of social cues and, most importantly, an exiled Russian in America, this novel is a literary example of a story of character—the writing of a person through a series of anecdotes of his life, but this time taken by an author mirroring himself, Nabokov, a Russian literary genius. He is mostly known for Lolita, a novel about a paedophile’s obsession, a horror written in prose that became a literary masterpiece, disturbing and banned in multiple countries across the world. Pnin, however, was a parallel story that Nabokov was writing backstage, to decompress from Lolita, to look for himself, as if he was exiling from his own exile between works. It was published just a year later, and solidified him as an intellectual in the English literary world. One of the points I was most fascinated by was his allusions to Russian aphorisms and understandings in the American world, among them his comparison of a land father to a water father. The first, rooted in earth, law, borders, and institutions—classifying, misjudging, condescending. The latter being a man exiled and turning inward. Someone who lives with great courage, serenely wise, faithful to a single love. Authentic. Integral. What Nabokov wanted to realise for himself, even in exile, even far from his known self.

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Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday - Ideas are cheap, do the work. It’s one of the points I realised most from this book. It’s not about learning how to sell your ideas. It’s about having something worthy to sell in the first place. Through four areas: creativity, positioning, marketing and platform, Holiday explores the fundamentals of great content and how to ground it when the world gives you mixed signals, when we claim we want to do something that matters but keep on measuring against things that don’t, when the world is waiting for you to make things that will make it better. There are a handful of books that I reread to realise a snapshot of my growth from time to time and this is one of them. Every time I read it I feel more mature as a writer. One of the greatest lessons I took this time around reading it is that we should make our work as beautiful and emotionally evocative to others as it is to us. Ryan Holiday is my platonic mentor and someone I deeply respect and admire for his ability to move between worlds throughout his life journey primarily as a reader and writer. He has already written 12 best-selling books, covering topics like philosophy, marketing, history, and how to live well, but also every day he writes a small powerful stoic note that gets to my inbox through the Daily Stoic. This is valuable reading regardless of where you are in your creative journey.

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing - “No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expects that it will fail.” Those words from Alfred Lansing describe one of the wildest stories ever told. Written in 1959, this novel tells the incredible story of a shipwreck and the leadership, perseverance, and courage of its twenty-eight crew members to survive. There are so many things about this novel that make you pause and appreciate the positive sides of human nature—among them a man’s ability to change his mind, the trust in one another, examples of sacrifice for the greater good—all under impossible circumstances. It was so good that by the end I couldn’t hold it and wept. What I also found fascinating is that this story was written four decades after the incident, discovered by Lansing while reading Shackleton’s memoir. He then began a quest of interviewing the living survivors. His wife later reported that Lansing started “writing obsessively,” a great segue into how he achieved such vivid prose and emotional depth. All said, the book was forgotten at publication, as it didn’t match the interests of the time (Sputnik was launched a few years earlier, sparking the space race in the Cold War). And almost three decades later, the book was republished, selling over half a million copies. The attention to detail makes it a staple in literature. “Only a handful of books are so firmly connected to the timeless underpinnings of life that they survive into the future,” says author Nathaniel Philbrick.

Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age by Jonah Berger - A fast, insightful read on marketing—a field that changes rapidly—using very memorable examples grounded in six timeless principles: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories (STEPPS). Have you noticed how it takes forever to pull the cover off the box of your new iPhone? That’s intended—it means putting the customer first with the experience. When was the last time you used your air miles? Probably a long time ago, 9 out of 10 people never cash in the airline miles that they accumulate. What is the last thing you remember buying without seeing someone else wearing it or talking about it? Maybe half of the things, since word of mouth makes you buy things about 50% of the time. From speakeasy popularity to Disney vacations—we see the principles applied everywhere around us. It was fascinating to learn about our competitiveness around consumption, and how we often care more about status than our own individual benefit. Published in 2013, the point of this book is not to make you a marketing expert, but to understand the nuances between good marketing and things that can go viral. In a world where our attention shifts constantly, that difference will help you understand both how marketing works on you and how you can create content that could stick forever.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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Carl Jung mentioned a fifth function beyond the four physical ones as human beings: sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition. Sensation tells us that something exists. Thinking tells us what it is. Feeling evaluates its worth. Intuition reveals the possibilities. Feeling guides us to what matters, but it’s still tied to the world around us.

The fifth function, he calls it the “transcendent,” right in the centre of us. It works through symbols, not logic—though logic can guide us toward it. It emerges from conflict, often revealed through dreams, active imagination, or creative expression, leading to deeper self-understanding and renewal, rather than just thinking.

Richard Rohr, in “Falling Upward,” explains that the opposite of rational is often transrational. The rational lives in opposites and logic. The transrational doesn’t act as an opposite but as things that are bigger than what our minds can process, like love, death, suffering, God, and infinity. The transrational keeps us within an open system so that the soul, the heart, and the mind do not close down in a small space. Otherwise, the mind tends to either avoid, deny or blame somebody else for transrational things, when in fact they are the greatest spiritual teachers of all, if we let them.

For Jung’s concept, we need to learn to express through our creative selves. For Rohr’s concept, we need to learn how to better contemplate. When we hold both—when we feel something that goes beyond our understanding and give it permission to stay, when that requires us to spend time in solitude with what we cannot yet understand—and then we give it form through our craft, whether writing, painting, singing, or others, we connect the physical and immaterial, and become our whole self.

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Have you had that feeling when you come back home over the years, and you don’t recognise the place the way you used to? Colours, smells, spaces, that feeling and narrative of the past that became absorbed and transformed by the present? What is it that we really call home, then? Is it a place, a person, a time? What if none of them exist anymore? Also, what does that mean for who we are? What does it mean for the country that you came from?

Can you call yourself from one nationality even though you were born there but left more than ten years ago?

An African, North American, Atheist, but Christian for the past 3 years?

An Indian, Russian, and Muslim?

An Arab, South American, British, and born in a religious family, but not so religious anymore?

Is there a mould for any of those? Are they all immigrants? Could they recognise themselves by their country of birth? Or are you the product of all the places and times? The result of many events, emotions, people and dialogues together. The opposite of this is fitting a mould, an inauthentic self, shape, or label.

What about the beliefs? Spiritualism or religion plays a large role; it’s what makes people connected… or disconnected. I keep reminding myself that one cannot have religion without faith, but one can have faith without religion. Traditions, celebration dates, ways of thinking—It makes me think how urgent it is to explore ourselves by looking to the past to see our present. I can’t call myself one thing or the other; I cannot think I am pro one thing and hence I need to be against the other. The world needs a richer dialogue, not an either/or, but rather a both/and. Between our pasts, assumptions, and learnings—this month I’m exploring how geography shapes global politics, one philosopher’s reflections on her family journey through communist Albania, and a Southern classic about alienation in modern life.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy - This book tells the story of a veteran who returns home from the Korean War and loses his sense of meaning, rejecting the “everydayness” of life. Friends, love, purposeful work—he decides to trade it all for at least “five minutes” from the wonder of TV and dating a new woman every chance he gets. He notices that not searching for something is to be in despair. But on the other hand, there are those who, in a constant search for entertainment, finally find no one and nowhere. Or how people around him keep saying that they believe in the uniqueness of the individual, but that those are far from unique themselves. Originally published in 1961, this book relates to our alienation in the modern age, weighing our decisions based on short-sightedness rather than what’s hard but morally correct and truly being alive. Percy touches on philosophical and existential concepts from his Southern Catholic background and from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in the fulfilment of the individual spirit. I enjoyed how the different family members pull the veteran toward their own perspectives on life. “Have you noticed that only in times of illness or disaster or death are people real?” his fragile cousin Kate tells him at one point, “I remember at the time of the wreck - people were so kind and helpful and solid. Everyone pretended that our lives until that moment had been every bit as real as the moment itself and that the future must be real too… In another hour or so we had all faded out again and gone our dim ways.” This is widely considered Percy’s masterpiece, full of classic writing, Southern tones and a call for one’s own authenticity.

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall - I wasn’t aware that a million people died during the displacement of citizens between India and Pakistan when the British decided to withdraw their empire and partition the countries in 1947. I also wasn’t aware that the isolation Africa has experienced over its history is largely due to its geographical challenges and impractical rivers. Or how the European Union holds France and Germany together economically to avoid another world war. Or how Egypt, Syria, and Jordan are suspicious of Palestinian independence due to their own territorial claims. Or that the South China Sea is having one of the highest tension crises in history due to its complications with Taiwan, while the US holds a military alliance with most of the area, a military capability that China is now building. Or the cycles of American foreign policy embodied in Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim to ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’. Marshall has participated in broadcasting world events for the BBC, Sky News, and other international news outlets, and in this book, he provides an insightful overview of how geography shapes global politics as he walks us through ten maps of the world. It also gives you an overall context on religious tensions and interpretations across the world, and how, for example, the intelligence services in London reported that in 2015, more British Muslims were fighting in the broader Middle East region for jihadist groups than were serving in the British Army. The book could always feel outdated or biased due to the changing geopolitical landscape and Marshall’s Western point of view. Still, nevertheless, this is one of those books that makes you wonder how strongly you believe things you know so little about, and will help ground you better if you are looking to develop a global perspective.

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi - The genuine excitement of a child is nothing you can compare: riding their first bike, a novelty toy, the joy of new encounters. For the young Lea Ypi was being convinced that there was nothing better than communism. She woke up “every morning wanting to have communism faster.” It was the 80’s and it was Albania, and her school, friends, and everything around her would convince her so; everyone but her family, who, for silent reasons after decades of the regime, couldn’t tell her their honest opinion for fear of being prosecuted. In this book, Ypi walks us through the perils she faced during her childhood, from the mysticism surrounding their country’s leader, Enver Hoxha, to long queues for the most basic things like cheese or kerosene (have you heard about these urban crises recently, somewhere else, some other times?). The subtitle, “coming of age at the end of history,” continues with Ypi’s broken innocence and revelations after Albania became a multi-party system and triggered the civil war in the 90’s. It was also the moment when many people, in their slim options for a better place, fled the country with whatever they had in overcrowded boats just to be rejected back or die in suffocation. This also marked a turn in policies against refugees and people in need. But as Ypi says, “failure is the shore from which we sail: not the port where we arrive.” Ypi teaches at LSE a course on philosophy in socialism. I met her in one of her book tours and I was fascinated by her questions on dignity, freedom, identity and philosophy. This is her first book and it brings so much learning to those who have emigrated from countries in crisis, or those who face the consequences of accepting a greater lie from the state: the illusions of nationalism. Her writing strikes me hard because I myself am an immigrant and, truly, no one wants to be an immigrant. I remain an apprentice for the history of Eastern Europe and Balkan countries and this is a book I’d highly recommend to fit in that puzzle.

Indignity: A Life Reimagined by Lea Ypi - This book reads like you’re on a movie set, crossing different realities and historical figures in a communist nation and its remnants in the present. In her first book, Free, Ypi explored how “biographies” became weaponised in post-war Albania and served as surveillance tools under communist rules: the last names, race, parents’ occupations, one’s own identity. Freedom, she argued, meant resisting this determinism while preserving one’s moral integrity. In her new work, Indignity, she is surprised by a picture on social media of her late grandparents happily honeymooning in the Alps in 1941, during the Second World War. And while being criticised by random online users, she also faces unsettling questions—growing up, she was told records of her grandmother’s youth were destroyed in the early days of communism, how is it then, that this picture prevailed, and was preserved in government records? Moreover, how can she defend her grandmother’s dignity against these comments? Ypi then makes an investigation beyond boundaries, reconstructing the past and building a fictionalised story about her ancestors who were closely tied to political figures, while grappling with the fragility of truth and the cost of decisions made many decades ago. One wonders, then, whether dignity depends on external recognition or on an inherent quality simply because of who we are. Does it require us to be alive, or rather, is it immaterial, beyond life and death? I became very fascinated by her philosophical reflections on the trade-offs we make to preserve our dignity—do we sacrifice dignity when we surrender independence? Or is there dignity in choosing dependence? Do we build dignity through the words we use to define ourselves, or do those words chain us to fictions?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

Tell me a book that marked your life? If you had to tell me what to read next, what would it be? Who is your favourite author? All these questions, and I really don’t know the answer, because I spend most of the time reading and being curious. Sometimes overwhelmed and dispersed; other times sharp-focused. And I truly don’t know if it is a privilege or just a hole in the process. I answer the questions by asking more questions. “What are you going through?” “What type of book has marked you before?” My replies leave me unsatisfied, unguided, unsure. I keep on planting a seed for a bigger question. I think in bulks, and periods, and people that affected me, and phases of my life.

In 2024, a book that broke my heart and made me more human was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. A book that helped me understand how to achieve my dreams was Mastery by Robert Greene, which changed my perception of my doubts and fears. When I wanted to learn about women who changed history, I read the biography of Florence Nightingale by Woodham Smith (one of the most enriching biographies I ever read and wrote about here). A book that taught me how to see the world differently is Same as Ever by Morgan Housel. Another book that helped me connect the dots spiritually is Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett.

I read and reread The Midnight Library by Matt Haig when I was sad about the outcomes of my decisions.

I read and reread Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday when I wanted to become more accountable to myself.

I read and reread The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz when I wanted to regain extraordinary ambition.

It wasn’t all worth it—over half of my reads are not books I’d want to read again. Do I regret it? No, not at all. I’ve discovered great writing, and I’ve discerned from it after reading more books. I evolve my thinking as I flip the pages. I’m changing my taste and becoming a more demanding reader. The books are part of my DNA. I’ve learned some things about them. I’m taking the knowledge that’s useful for me.

One book can change your way of seeing the world; a hundred can change your destiny. I’m aiming to record my impressions for every book I read in my lifetime, and it’s become my tradition to share them with you; so here are my top picks from 2025.

Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks - This is hands down one of the greatest books on life writing and storytelling. Dicks is a thirty-six-time Moth StorySLAM champion and five-time GrandSLAM champion. Imagine the Moth as a stand-up comedy, but rather than jokes, you’d have stories of transformation. This book walks you through the best tricks in storytelling you wouldn’t have read anywhere else, and in an obvious and exemplified fashion. One of the greatest lessons I learned was that all great stories - regardless of length, or depth or tone - tell a five-second moment that changes a person’s life fundamentally. Better yet, if we polish our lenses, we actually have these five-second moments every day. What the story helps us do is bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible. Furthermore, the opposite of the five-second moment is where your storytelling needs to start, as close to the moment of change as possible. After reading this book, I’ve been noticing so many patterns across movies, series, and the best jokes I’ve ever heard. Among the dozen activities that Matthew Dicks does as a columnist, playwright and blogger, he also acts as a teacher and cofounder of his own training program storyworthymd.com. I cannot recommend this book enough if you want to improve your storytelling.

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel - I’ve read this book three times, and I keep quoting Housel and recommending him all the time: I did it in my last year’s book recommendations, in my essay on invisible wealth, and in my writings about childhood and purpose. He is one of the best non-fiction writers around at the moment and one of my platonic mentors. The way he writes a story is worth studying—not if you’re into writing or any other similar act, but because we are all creatives by nature in the way we think and express ourselves. In The Psychology of Money he walks us through most of the myths around wealth. I indexed a lot of his ideas in my “investing” category, but I can say that they should all be holistic in decision-making. Beyond his good definition of investing genius - a person who can do the average thing when everyone around you is not - most of the concepts in this book are unique and unusual. His point on tail events, luck and risk, points of failures, surprises, and perspectives among ourselves. Also, his other book, Same as Ever, has no waste in reading. I am looking forward to reading his latest The Art of Spending Money.

The Daily Laws by Robert Greene - “Robert, you’re never going to be a writer,” his editor pointed to him one day while Robert was living in New York, “you need to find another career in your life. You need to go to law school. You don’t have the tools; your writing is all over the place. Just forget it.” Echoing the words afterwards, Greene faced it as not true. That the only truth was that he is not made for journalism—the big corporations, the politics, the fitted outcomes. His real conclusion was that you’ve got to know what you don’t like. He had over fifty jobs as he started writing his first book. Still, no one was really paying attention to his idea on the laws of power, until he worked as a writer in an art and media school in Italy, and met with a book packager who heard and encouraged Greene to continue. This marked a turning point in Robert’s life, and that’s how he published The 48 Laws of Power, one of the best books in history on persuasion, perception and politics. It was so powerful that it became banned in some prisons in the US. He then wrote the follow-up best sellers: The Laws Of Human Nature, The 33 Strategies of War, Mastery, The Art of Seduction. All of his books are works of art, but the book I ranked as top for me this year is The Daily Laws, published in 2021 as a collection of 366 meditations from all of Greene’s works. The book reads as one page daily, and there’s not a single one wasted. You can see that Greene’s success as an author wasn’t overnight; his path should resonate with anyone who feels rejected and far from any goal and dream envisioned, even when no one else recognises your work.

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The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life by Boyd Varty - Joseph Campbell said, “If you can see your whole life’s path laid out, then it’s not your life’s path.” A great and unconventional book on leadership that came out of Boyd’s experience as a safari guide in South Africa, which led him to become a life coach. As I look at my year of readings, I keep coming back to this book because all I can think about when things turn out negatively is Varty’s paradox on “going down a path and not finding a track is part of finding the track,” or in other words, the path of not here. This book is a light and wonderful read on the importance of finding your own tracker in life, and how we have forgotten that life holds a unique story for each of us. What I also appreciate about this story is the importance of hardship, or being in “the danger of no danger.” We are naturally made to face danger. The world is waiting for us to discover our path and be one of those masters who can use their intuition and be themselves in any situation, and also appreciate “look at the thing you have seen a thousand times and always see something new.” A highly recommended read, I learned about Varty by reading Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity (also an amazing book).

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head (And How to Harness It) by Ethan Kross - Earlier this year, I was struggling to balance personal life with professional changes while battling impostor syndrome. I threw it out there to a friend, and her immediate response was, “You should read Chatter,” without a doubt. Every time someone I trust recommends a book to me, I try to order it immediately. What a book! We all have an inner voice, an avid time traveller and a relentless critic. Chatter is a form of repetitive, anxious thought and a marvellous saboteur that comes during focused tasks. How often do we revisit moments with guilt, pain, or regret over thoughts or things someone said to us? How often do we enter a meeting to say crucial things, an audition or a competition, only to feel like we are failing right from the start? Moreover, how much mental baggage do we carry from our family, friends, colleagues, and society, and how do we find ways to deal with it? From the way we engage with rituals, perspectives, and placebo effects, how to provide, receive, and create the environment for better support for chatter. It’s all in our heads, and Kross sorts it in his book with a clear, well-written framework and many ways to deal with the chatter in our minds.

Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin - This book is a mark in my life and is easily one of the best ones I have ever read. I’m drawn to American presidential history, and I have highlighted most of the pages. There’s not a single word of waste by the historian Kearns Goodwin. She brings a fascinating narrative of four presidents who shaped the nation during crucial periods: Abraham Lincoln during the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, Theodore Roosevelt during the 1902 coal strike, Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1933 Great Depression’s first 100 days, and Lyndon B. Johnson during the 1964 Civil Rights Movement. The fascinating part is how Kearns Goodwin masterfully connects the upbringings of each president, their sense of ambition, their intense adversities, and their methods of crisis management. The patterns across the book are striking, from Lincoln’s melancholy and constant depression to Teddy’s struggles with debilitating asthma to FDR’s ability to face poliomyelitis and keep his political life active to LBJ’s twenty-hour days and extraordinary skill at getting things done. The four of them maintain their ambition despite multiple failures. Each one offers lessons applicable to our own challenges. What’s more, the book combines their experiences with clear leadership principles from prominent academics and contemporary psychologists. This book rewards reading at any stage of life.

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin - Another masterful work from Kearns Goodwin, but this time on a deep dive to FDR’s evolution in relationships with European powers during the Second World War, and the challenges rising in America: war production, racism, women entering the workforce, Japanese internment camps, post-war plans, the case for the United Nations, among others. “The only thing to fear is fear itself,” said FDR after the Great Depression in the early 30’s, words that proved prophetic. This book illustrates the creation of Modern America and the sudden change in geopolitics. I enjoy reading the behind-the-scenes stories of impactful people and gaining insight into their humanity. I also wrote about it here. It also struck me to find Eleanor say, “to be nearly sixty and still rebel at uncertainty is ridiculous, isn’t it,” to an insomniac Franklin as he secretly confessed the military plans the night before D-Day, the invasion of France to recover from the Nazis.

Travels with Epicurus: Meditations from a Greek Island on the Pleasures of Old Age by Daniel Klein - This might be one of my favourite reads ever, and is perfect for an accessible yet profound entry into philosophy. I discovered it through Ryan Holiday, who highlighted this powerful passage: “I remember one long-ago evening, on an overcrowded train to Philadelphia, hearing a young woman moan to her mother, ‘God I wish we were there already!’ Her white-haired mother replied eloquently, ‘Darling, never wish away a minute of your life.’” Klein combines an academic background in philosophy and lived experiences, exploring the merits of old age while actually travelling to a Greek island. He covers a lot of ground in Epicureanism in very relatable terms, with close to 150 pages. His journey explores existentialism, our interpretation of time, moderation, solitude, relationships, among others.

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman - Already one of my favourites this year. I am a big fan of the writings from Burkeman, and I subscribed to his newsletter “The Imperfectionist”. His previous book Four Thousand Weeks is one that I recommend to anyone who wants to grasp their own concepts of happiness by using philosophy and mortality as tenets. In his new book, Burkeman divides his writing into four blocks and invites us to read one chapter per day for four weeks and be contemplative about its meaning (I read them in one week). The blocks are split first by being finite; second, by taking action; third, by letting go; and fourth, by showing up. Although the concepts might sound repetitive to those of us who have been reading long stretches of modern philosophy content out there, I learned some really good perspectives in each block. There is this sense of feeling much better with myself after I read something from Oliver Burkeman. I praise his work, and I highly recommend it to everyone!

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - I couldn’t believe I let this sit on my bookshelf for so long. 478 pages that I couldn’t put down and therefore finished in three days. A contemporary fiction, this book explores deep complexities around relationships, virtues, ambition, dreams, philosophy, creative endeavours, addictions, tragedy, and above everything, love. I felt entertained and educated after it, and I’d recommend it to anyone, wherever they are in their walk of life. It gives insights into how we see the present when the past is only in our heads. Also, how are we playing our own life games in reality? A quote that stuck with me is “this life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.” Yes, it’s hard to face life in different circumstances and find ourselves making choices that could be ethically imperfect: taking a shortcut, ignoring a principle, benefiting from something or someone. But can we avoid those decisions that we can see clearly? When everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease. Not speaking up when we need to, pretending it’s not your problem because you’re not in the spotlight. If that’s the case and we are playing, what decisions can we change for the better today?

Audition by Kate Kitamura - I just can’t stop thinking about this novel because of how visceral it is. It grabs you, shakes you, and then throws you back to the real world. It opens with an older woman meeting a young man in a restaurant, and as they finish ordering, she says what she needs to say, then turns towards the door, and everything spirals into a frenzy. As you start to follow the plot flipping pages, there’s a sudden shift, a signal pointing that time has been wasted far enough. Then Kitamura forces you to ask: what’s the point of a performance? Is it that it allows us to live in a different world, or just the hypocrisies of our desire? Is it to hide emotions from us or to get closer to them? Rituals, relationships, dialogues, roles, spaces, fictions we get trapped in, sometimes even in our own houses. Kitamura points out how we are all seeking the same thing: to know that we exist in the world, the most fundamental validation. But in the process, we build our own sense of self, patterns emerge, and our perceptions start to take shape, too. Anything you observe, any way you watch yourself act, how you hear yourself speak and then articulate again—what you leave behind is mostly emptiness. It is then that you become aware of the unknown surrounding you.

I find joy in sharing these impressions with you after reading dozens of books in one year. But if you’re just starting on your reading journey, or you are intimidated by the load you see ahead, just remember it’s page by page. There’s no shortcut, just investing time in all those things that are making the greatest difference to you and will bring success, as you define it. The more you do that, the more successful you will be. Such is the case with reading books, and I’m committed to reading and indexing learnings in as many books as I can in the coming weeks, months and years.

Join me in sharing your thoughts on these ideas, and tell me what your greatest reads for 2025 are? The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please pass them along.

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I found myself buying a new bookshelf this month and had the marvelous and basic idea to dedicate just one space to a lot of books that I want to have “pending” to read. It helped me spend less time selecting my next read. It started well before descending into chaos and running out of space. It’s the problem of wanting to read everything you’re interested in, but as they say, you buy books with the time it takes to read them. My goal this month was to expand my mind in literature, art and their conception in real world examples. It gave me a biography, a classic play, one of the most meta novels I’ve ever read, a spiritual book about the rest of our lives, and a great research explaining wonderful hints hidden from those who don’t want to see. I find it fascinating to combine different types of reads in short time windows because it gives you a broader sense of clarity and flavour to the things you find day to day, and if there is a message from my reading this month, it is to find ways to free yourself from repetition, either by reading new topics, making new things or finding a different way to approach a challenge.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - There’s this desire from everyone to discover “secrets” from genius people but when I read this biography all I can see is someone who was just weird, passionate, trying things, and consistently curious about everything. It reminded me of a recent podcast I heard where David Senra mentioned that the most successful people are those who look backward and say “That guy or that woman was great. How did they do that?” as Jobs did when studying Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, and Land in turn studied Alexander Graham Bell, and if you look back in American entrepreneurship it goes all the way to Benjamin Franklin. That is an enduring part of human nature that will never change. It’s going to happen while we’re alive. It’s going to happen 1,000 years from now. I also liked how Jobs positioned design and engineering teams together when he came back to Apple, building one of the most creative companies in the world and creating a model that influenced countless others. I was also surprised to learn how, almost by accident, he ended up meeting the most creative minds in modern animation, released Toy Story, and founded the Pixar we know today. Yes, he is a man with flaws, his family life wasn’t always great, he could be cruel as a leader, we all have learnings to take from that. But if there’s a message I take away from this book, it’s not to fall into patterns or keep doing the same thing. Instead, try to see the world differently and be a curious, obsessed explorer. As Jobs himself said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller - This is a fascinating play that illustrates the myth that anyone can achieve success through hard work. Written in 1949, during a time of great optimism following the post-World War II boom in America, this play exposes the hidden costs of capitalism and the American Dream through the life of a man who spends thirty-six years as a salesman for a company and suddenly faces the threat of having his job and salary taken away. In this short play, Miller describes how pride, your greatest enemy, takes you to empty places as your obsessions with materialism and entitlement push away your family, mind, and spirit. With his two sons falling victim to his father’s high professional expectations, and a patronised wife who tries desperately to please him, Miller unravels the despair of a man whose sense of identity becomes lost when all he identified with was actually his work and his last name. There’s a trap in seeing successful people who’ve spent their lives accumulating wealth and status. They may look fulfilled, but they might actually be imprisoned by what they’ve built. As Miller says, “a small man can be as exhausted as a great man” and “no man only needs a little salary.” Now I understand why this play appears so often in history books and contemporary discussions. It captured something essential and perhaps very relatable to many about America’s post-war moment: the trap that lies within the Dream, and maybe the one we build in our own identities.

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino - This novel was so hard and meta to read that I had to reread entire chapters multiple times to understand what was happening, and even though I did, I still didn’t understand what was going on. It’s both funny and tragic, it made me uncomfortable and desperate, but also submissive and giving, and that was exactly the point that Calvino wanted to make. The novel cues its beginning to then connect with a reader who is reading it, who then complains that the printing is wrong and the pages are jumping; and then you find yourself trying to find the exact book that can help you continue the story, beginning then a new thrilling story for a total of... ten times! The main character encounters different translators, historians and people he trusts along the way who tell him what to read to continue the story. And as you become frustrated and feel like giving up, Calvino says, “the romantic fascination produced in the pure state by the first sentences of the first chapter of many novels is soon lost in the continuation of the story, it is the promise of a time of reading that extends before us and can comprise all possible developments. I want to write a book that is only incipit, that maintains for its whole duration the potentiality of the beginning.” This novel reminded me that there’s a beauty in reading for the sake of reading, that the imagination of how things might continue is one of the greatest pleasures (where is the beginning really? where is the end?), and I highlighted many beautiful passages by letting myself get lost in the book. At one point, a conversation sparks between many readers in a library who start telling how each one reads, and one of them says, “of every book I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.” A reminder I want to carry with me.

Failing Upward, a spirituality for the two halves of life by Richard Rohr - This book speaks to our need for spiritual maturity and how we are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our true self. But our social structures block us from evolving on this path. The risk is that not exploring can mean spending the rest of your life stuck on issues of identity, security, sexuality and gender. But how do we start? Rohr describes life as split into two halves: the first half where we build structure and learn impulse control, traditions, family loyalties, basic respect for civil and religious principles, values and where you are from. The second half of life, ironically, is where you let go of your structure and ego, exploring mistakes and recognising your sins and gifts as two sides of the same coin. It is in the second half where you understand better the transrational: what goes beyond mere logic, or things that are bigger than ourselves, like love, death, suffering, God, and infinity. In our spiritual maturity, life ends up becoming a path that looks more like a spiral than a straight line. That is where we learn that, different from traditional dogmas and extremist views, entry into heaven is the rediscovery of the still-enchanted world of a happy child, but it now includes the maturing experiences of love, unique life journeys, the acceptance of all your relationships, and just enough failures to keep you honest and grounded. What impressed me most was learning about the different Bible passages that relate to these two halves and our need to “repent,” or change your mind; that each generation must make its own spiritual discoveries—otherwise, we merely react to the previous generation or conform without exploring. I also found it fascinating that most of us are only willing to put 5 percent of our present information into question, which is why most of the time only those who are the most open-minded and listening are the ones who are able to drive society to a better place. This book provides a path for all of us to try and do the same.

Trickster Makes This World, How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture by Lewis Hyde - This is a wonderful and rich book about the trickster heroes found in myths across cultures. Think about Hermes, Coyote, the Cheshire cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Achilles, Odysseus, Bart Simpson, The Joker, Loki, figures that break rules, mock authority, cross boundaries, hate rigidity, use cleverness more than strength. These figures vary not just in their stories but across cultures and national identities. I was fascinated to learn about America’s confidence man as a trickster, a figure representing the land of rootless wanderers and free market, of immigrants, of anyone who can shamelessly say anything at any time, of opportunity and therefore of opportunists, of individuals who are allowed and even encouraged to act without regard to community. I explored my own cultural heritage and countries where I had life experiences too: Venezuela with El Silbón, La Sayona; Lebanon with the Surviving Merchant, the Djinn; Chile with El Trauco, El Farolito. Each reflects different cultural concerns—survival intelligence, moral lessons, colonial resistance, deceptive seduction, taboo-breaking, erotic mischief, rural boundary transgression—ways of navigating between worlds. The nature of tricksters is to act on the periphery, never in the centre. They are not immoral but amoral figures that don’t fit into monotheistic religions with clear divisions between good and evil. They don’t have a single way, but they imitate and create many ways, and they all start from their curiosity, need for survival, and the instinct to test boundaries. I wasn’t aware of the complexity of these figures in our society, but after reading this book I’m fascinated by how they appear in every story and every tale, and their myths transform our imagination. The beauty of tricksters is that if we learn them well, we recognise them not only in modern literature and films, but in the people we most admire in real life for their ability to adapt, change and improvise to make an impact.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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Starting a job, leaving a job, getting married, getting divorced, having children, losing a loved one, becoming ill, moving to a new town, graduating from school, meeting a new best friend… It’s said that on average adults experience a disruptive event every 18 months. Isn’t that crazy? What’s more shocking is how little we know about the tools to cope with those events, individually.

We claim these events as change, the end of a cycle, or the beginning of a new one. They are hard to cope with and hard to trigger. Albert Einstein once said that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them. Pay close attention to the areas of your life where you feel tension, and odds are you’ll discover at least some resistance to change.

Do you need to make something different? Or remain still, while everything around you changes? Could being still make the difference?

Do you need to break expectations and defy the status quo, to become what others could not imagine? Or rather, to keep the status quo while everyone around you believes in new things? What if you need to unlearn to break the status quo? When everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease.

Can you say you’ve changed more than someone else has? When you return to your roots and the people you grew up with, can you really describe them as changed? Beliefs, friends, family, feelings, thoughts. What if someone’s thinking hasn’t changed at all, is that a bad thing?

There are more questions than answers. It’s what happens when we face change. And I can’t live without feeling I’m changing. I’ve defined change within my own boundaries. I’ve gone through things that are hard to grasp and recognise even for myself. Sometimes when I look back, I realise there were parts of myself I hadn’t noticed had changed. I found it so timely to read Brad Stulberg’s Master of Change, and thought it helpful to list 18 lessons on navigating change that will stay with me.

Change is inevitable, focus on what you can control.

1. The fact that everything in this world is transitory increases its value. To live is to lose. Change is to lose. Limitation on enjoyment raises the value of enjoyment. Accept the beauty as you also accept its loss.

2. After surviving the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl wrote “Tragic Optimism,” arguing that change is accepting the negative while leaving room for the positive. He concludes that there are three inevitable tragedies in life: (1) Pain and suffering, because we are made of flesh and bone. (2) Guilt, because we have some freedom to make choices, and thus we feel responsible when things don’t work as we hoped. (3) Our ability to look ahead, since everything we cherish, including our own lives, will eventually change or end.

3. Before most religions, the ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus opened his handbook with this line: “Of things some are in our power, and others are not.” In 1951, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr shared the same idea in his Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Focus on what you can control, and do it right. Make bold acts. Prepare for that test. Wake up early, or sleep later. Get obsessed about what gives you energy and what you can do something about.

4. You never go back to the way things were. You don’t go from disorder to the same order, but rather to reorder, reintegrate, reorientate, repair. Recovering from a traumatic change means moving forward with a greater tolerance for emotional distress. We achieve stability through change, and with it our compassion for others who are suffering.

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Having a list of values helps you navigate change.

5. Values help us navigate change like a ship navigating turbulent waters. They’re the principles by which you live, the boundaries of your identity that guide how you differentiate, integrate, and navigate your path. Choose a short list: three to five. The shorter the better.

6. Rank your values. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins suggests that when we rank love over comfort, we can prioritize service over our own discomfort. Or when we place adventure over success, we might choose a summer hiking trip over sacrificing more time to ambitious goals. Ranking helps you decide easier, better.

7. Even when we don’t know where the path leads, we’d be wise to simply do the next right thing. This gives us the best chance of getting where we ought to go.

8. The best approach is to combine fierce self-discipline with fierce self-compassion. If you know that you can be kind to yourself, then you can go to tough places, knowing that you’ve got your own back.

Your definition of identity affects how you navigate change.

9. If your identity becomes too much of one concept, such as your age, how you look in the mirror, a relationship, or your career, then you are likely to face significant distress in times of change. Instead, be fluid. Bond all your unique parts. Compare it to mountains—they are always wearing down, getting rounded and gentler; they can look permanent and peaceful, but their changes aren’t always so peaceful.

10. You become a different person depending on who you are with, where you are, and what you’re doing. This is the idea behind “Field Theory,” coined by social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. This is helpful to complement your identity and see the world in multiple ways.

11. Your ego should evolve with age. Otherwise, you can face an identity crisis. Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson illustrated this with eight stages of ego development: adolescence brings identity versus role confusion, young adulthood brings intimacy versus isolation. The final stage, maturity demonstrates both deep empathy and self-acceptance. It cherishes its own idiosyncrasies and those of others, and it understands both separateness from and connection to everything around it. The opposite is despair; elders who don’t know how to be elders.

9. A fluid sense of self embraces non-duality: Not differentiated or integrated, but differentiated and integrated; not separate or connected, but separate and connected; not conventional or ultimate, but conventional and ultimate. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggested asking yourself “what might this be true of’ when considering someone’s opinion.” Ask, is this view helping me right now? This can help you choose between an independent and interdependent decision.

Allow yourself time to process change.

13. Don’t force meaning and growth. Let them come on their own time. Finding balance after going through a change requires its own schedule. We need to give our psychological immune systems space to process disruption. As the Tao Te Ching asks: “Do you have the patience to wait till your mind settles and the water is clear?”

14. Change and disorder can make us feel down, depressed, burned out, void of growth and meaning. These feelings are inevitable parts of being human.

15. Separate real fatigue from fake fatigue: the first requires rest, the second calls for action. You can tell the difference when the next step toward your goal energises rather than exhausts you.

16. Create distance from issues when they happen: What would the old you say? What would it look like if you followed counsel right now? What would your best friend tell you if they were watching from outside?

Your next feeling depends on how you define happiness and suffering.

17. Happiness equals reality minus expectations. Recovering from disillusionment requires more work than managing expectations in the first place.

18. Suffering equals pain times resistance. Maybe you can’t avoid pain, but you can accept it.

The opposite of change is permanence. There’s a brief serendipity in seeing the world pause in the blink of an eye, noticing how wind is the only thing making your surroundings move. Hearing nothing but your breath, finding peace in knowing that everything around you is the same. The outcome of a walk, the end of a week, the permanence of your own self. But there’s a trap in believing that everything will remain the same. It limits us. It breaks the cycle of living. That’s why we most admire those who stay open to change.

Master of Change gave me a stronger lens for navigating disruption. If you’re interested in more recommendations like this, check out my monthly reading list. I spend most of my time reading and sharing my best recommendations by the end of every month. You can get the next one by subscribing below!

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Last month I had the chance to attend the Booker Prize 2025 Shortlist Announcement and I was in awe to sit in front of the judges talking about their experience reading, selecting and reviewing the books together for the past year. Did you know that they have to read at least 150 books the whole year just to get to the final longlist of 13? If a book on average has 40,000 words that means that they had to read 6,000,000 words in one year, or almost 3 books per week on average. When you think about that level of commitment and possibility, then you wonder how it is that new statistics show 46% of Americans haven’t read a book in the past year, or that only 16% read for pleasure on any given day, or that maybe many of the people surrounding you have just read a few books in a whole year? It’s never too late to start! Reading not only educates you, but also breaks your patterns and expand the world you know. As George R.R. Martin said once, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” Which is most of what my reading list this month is about: A new life after challenging religious traditions, consequences of our decisions, the art of how to change, and my cherry picked Booker Shortlist selection that I truly enjoyed and have a favorite for (Hint: it’s about an audition!).

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon - Do you practice religion, pray, participate in community, and read from ancient scriptures? Great, this book is for you. Avoid religion or have a strong opinion against it? Great, this book is for you. Sarah McCammon writes about her experience in a well-researched way growing up in a white evangelical family in the Midwest during the 80s and 90s during the Ronald Reagan era, now evolving into Trumpism. As fear and unresolved questions mounted, she describes experiences like reading Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye and stopping romantic relationships until marriage, believing she’d be the only one saved because she follows Jesus, and watching families separated over homosexuality or differing opinions. With Sarah, there is now a whole generation fleeing the fold, deconstructing the “alternative facts” of their childhood. Maybe call it freedom, or just being able to embrace different perspectives? We still see this cycle throughout most religions, now rooted in political movements too: always having a scripture answer behind their reasons, always thinking of conspiracy theories and doomsday, always needing to be right, always in an us vs them. This book made me angry, but also empathetic with my surroundings.

Coming Up for Air by George Orwell - A gripping novel that tells the story of a man who fought in the Great War and once felt in control of his life - until it was “too late.” He feels miserable with his work, his purpose, and most importantly, his wife and kids. This book explores the psychology of trying to find a way out in some of our life circumstances to then fall into the trap, once again. We all know Orwell for Animal Farm and 1984, his dystopian views of a future totalitarian state, and how we all feel inevitably trapped within (winking at some realities these days). But this book points to us as directly responsible. When you make mistakes early on and live with the consequences decades later; when you stop thinking and just live on autopilot; when you stand in front of something but can’t see it. The moments when you lose yourself. Quite surprising, this book was released on June 12, 1939, right before WWII started, and makes significant allusions to Hitler, the rise of fascism, and critics at the time not believing in any of it. One of my favorite quotes comes when George Bowling (the protagonist) with his First World War experience, tries to convince a well-read man about the menace of Hitler, but failing miserably to do so, concluding that “a man really dies when he loses the power to take in a new idea... Wonderfully learned, wonderfully good taste—but he is not capable of change. Just says the same things and thinks the same thoughts over and over again…Dead minds, stopped inside… Just keep moving backwards and forwards on the same little track, getting fainter all the time, like ghosts.”

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits - This book is about a man who found his partner cheating on him, but their life looks too perfect to blow it up. They stay together for the kids, he finds a good job that gives him purpose, he abandons his dreams for the sake of stability amid chaos. But then, what happens when the kids move out? When there’s no need to pretend anymore. When the facade collapses. After years of solitude in his head. After many days of misery and automation. Trapped and stifled in a dire marriage, facing a health issue, and after helping his youngest daughter to move out, the man decides to keep driving west and reconnect with his past while meeting again with significant others. Among them, an old friend who seems to have not fully inhabited his own life but gives him advice on how to do so; a brother who was always “momma’s boy,” attached, navigating a world after his own divorce, and projecting his own traumas onto love. Memories of his late father who shared relationship advice while having an affair and divorcing his mother. On the road, he meets with his ex and asks himself “what if I moved in with Jill and the last thirty years of our lives turned out to be an interruption?” What seems like an escape brings him face-to-face with one of life’s hardest tasks: finding yourself. Then you ask, which parts of your life are real and which are just comfortable distractions? The end stayed with me.

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Master of Change by Brad Stulberg - Starting a job, leaving a job, getting married, getting divorced, having children, losing a loved one, becoming ill, moving to a new town, graduating from school, meeting a new best friend… Did you know that an adult experiences a disruptive event in their lives every 18 months on average? Or that recovering from disappointment is actually harder than just having low expectations from the start? Or that many current political movements capitalize on giving people the illusion of control and a sense of the past? Or how unhelpful it is, for example, when someone is going through something hard and you tell them “brighten up, you’ll be okay, everyone gets sad from time to time!” This is one of the best self-help books I’ve read this year. Drawing from philosophical concepts, Stulberg expresses in 200 pages how inevitable it is to go through change, and that we can shape change as much as it can shape us. How your expectations play a role. How your identity plays a role. How values like patience, drive, even creativity, can play a role. Yes, it’s important to become resilient, but it’s not a solo game, and this book provides the tools to navigate it.

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller - Between 1962-1963 Britain experienced what is known as “the great freeze”, one of the most brutal winters on record, from late December to March, with harsh snow, rivers and parts of the sea frozen, disruption in services, transportation, and families disconnected from reality. The narrative in this novel revolves around two couples who are old enough to carry memories of WWII, but still young enough to leave them behind. As they each fought their own demons, they remained trapped in their secrets until it was too late. Miller writes about a misogynistic cheating partner, a daughter reflecting on mental illness and trauma, and others wrestling with family and class issues. None were prepared for the winter that came ahead of them. This book is filled with scenes that are both fundamentally descriptive and very human, making you wonder about misguided ambitions and things we hold on to. Things that become threads of our lives. Things that we control so much that they end up controlling us back. A slow, haunting meditation on how the past freezes us in place.

Audition by Kate Kitamura - This short novel grabs you, shakes you, and then throws you back to the real world. It opens with an older woman meeting a young man in a restaurant and, as they finish ordering, she says what she needs to say, and turning towards the door everything spirals into frenzy. As you start to follow the plot flipping pages, there’s a sudden shift, a signal pointing that time has been wasted far enough, and that the “beginning” is terribly needed now. Then Kitamura forces you to ask: what’s the point of a performance? Is it that it allows us to live in a different world or just the hypocrisies of our desire? Is it to hide emotions from us or to get closer to them? Rituals, relationships, dialogues, roles, spaces, fictions we get trapped in, sometimes even in our own houses. Kitamura points out how we are all seeking the same thing: to know that we exist in the world, the most fundamental validation. The one that comes and goes, and once gone, can never be regained the same way. But in the process we build our own sense of self, patterns emerge, our perceptions start performing too. Anything you observe, any way you watch yourself act, how you hear yourself speak and then articulate again—what you leave behind is mostly emptiness. It is then that you become aware of the unknown surrounding you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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There is a common ground among those who know their craft.

In the athlete who is at the top of their game.

In the musician who fills the stadium.

In the chess player who is a world champion.

In the painter whose work spans our age for hundreds of years.

In the writer whose quotes are immortal.

Their most valuable skill isn’t inspiration, but the ability to work without it. Most of their lives they work without talent, but persistence. Spending their lives cultivating an almost irrational appreciation for the discomfort others instinctively avoid.

They don’t ask why they spend years doing the work. They are haunted by not doing it.

They don’t allow themselves to be disturbed. The outside world takes nothing from them. By painting their own lives, they show us how to paint ours.

They develop their intuition as a gift. Whatever they produce has life and presence, a planet all on its own, with its own gravitational field, pulling to itself like-minded particles from the cosmos. Ideas, visions, characters. Images they have never seen. Words they didn’t know they knew.

They remain ignorant about certain things. They don’t mind not knowing. They are not less flawed or finite than you, they just stop waiting, they act with what they have and where they are. They feel in control because they’re living the life they actually have, not the one they wish for.

The girl who wrote about kindness while hiding from the Nazis.

The artist who painted the Mona Lisa.

The lawyer who freed his country from colonization without violence.

The pastor who faced racial hatred repeatedly and finally changed the course of humanity by saying “I have a dream.”

They don’t just live, but they live their own lives. And they make us follow. Sometimes for eternity.

Disappointment doesn’t deter them. Complacency is not an option. Grandiosity doesn’t blind them. They don’t waste time. They allow serendipity.

In mastering their craft, they learn how to see the world differently; they look with wonder and admiration at what is hidden for the rest of us. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured it by saying that “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

Every time they act, they congregate in a higher spiritual space. They notice what’s hidden in plain sight. They hear the silence between notes.

But there’s one more thing they all share.

They have an unmistakable respect in how they listen to you. They don’t say you are crazy. They hear your dreams. They don’t laugh at your ideas, they encourage them. If you get close enough, they show you how to accomplish them.

They want you to see the world as they do. They need you as much as you need them, to lift everyone higher.

The difference between them and you is one: decision. You don’t need more time, you just need to decide. The whole world will offer itself to you, if you keep trying.

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Sources

[1] Mastery - Robert Greene
[2] Montaigne - Stefan Zweig
[3] Govt Cheese - Steven Pressfield
[4] Meditation for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman
[5] Farnam Street Blog (Various) - Shane Parrish
[6] “You don’t need more time, you just need to decide” - Seth Godin’s Blog

Knowledge can be painful. Learning about history and the things that are wrong in the world. Having memories of the mistakes you made, the things you said, the actions you didn’t take. Realizing that you’re wrong in your deepest beliefs. Or the opposite, which is more scary, taking the first idea and closing your mind to new points, and different views. Knowledge bargains with our realities every day. Franz Kafka pointed out once that ridiculous confusions, in some circumstances, can determine the course of a man’s life. Or like those who can build their meaning from whatever catches their eye, social media, their parents, or the things they find in gift shops.

Knowledge can be powerfully combined. The right knowledge and courage can make you determined, optimistic, and confident in your own abilities. But the wrong knowledge and courage can make you stubborn and deaf.

It only takes the wrong knowledge to make you run a marathon in the opposite way. One quote or one person can influence you for years, let alone decades. Or stick you in the same year, over and over. Have you ever had the impression of meeting someone after much time later finding them in the same job, with the same income, and the same way of speaking?

Knowledge is an act of transformation, it can make you change partially or completely. Knowledge connects you with others. James Baldwin once said “you think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, and then you read.” Knowledge can tear the appearance or character of something or someone, for better or for worse. But in regards to whom, in comparison to what?

What is it that makes us stick to the idea of selves and fix our minds blindly sometimes when the answers are right in front of us? To hear new opinions and forget them. To read new books and not change because of them. To be led by influence and not by decision? Herman Hesse pointed out the difference between searching and finding. When searching, we often see only what we’re looking for. Unable to find anything else, unable to let anything new enter our minds, we become obsessed with our goal. There are many things you don’t see, which are directly in front of your eyes. But finding means being free, being open, having no goal.

This searching, this desperate clinging to individual identity, this is the root of wrong knowledge shaping everything. The belief that we’re separate beings, isolated egos seeking meaning. And this false knowledge shapes everything we see. But what if that’s not just wrong, what if it’s the source of almost everything that goes wrong?

The philosopher Alan Watts pointed once that we do not “come into” this world, but we come out of it. As leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples”. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. A rare experience by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin.

Watts tells us that this illusion creates two results. First is that our attitude to the world “outside” us is incredibly hostile. We are forever “conquering” nature, space, mountains, deserts, bacteria and insects, instead of learning to cooperate with them in a harmonious order. This inevitably leads to ignoring the basic dependence of all things and events, and will end by destroying the very environment from which we emerge.

Second is that we have no common sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It’s just your opinion against mine, and therefore the most aggressive, violent and insensitive propagandist makes the decisions.

This illusion of separation doesn’t just affect how we see ourselves, but it shapes entire societies. As author Ryan Holiday wrote once, it is the reason why one side of town is pretty and well “manicured” and the other isn’t, why one group is bailed out and the other carries on, why some crimes are punished severely and the others get a slap on the wrist, why the rich start the wars but the poor die in them.

Bishop Desmond Tutu described the ancient African word Ubuntu the same way, pointing out that it is the essence of being human, corresponding to the fact that “you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness.” So did Nelson Mandela, saying that the greatest self-interest would be that of enabling the community around you to improve.

It might seem, then, that uncommon sense and our need to balance can lead us astray, and wait for some genius to invent a new religion, a philosophy of life, a set of beliefs in which every individual can feel its meaning in the world as a whole. But this, as history has shown repeatedly, is not enough. Tribes become unfriendly to one another. Religions are divisive and quarrelsome. They are a form of dependence upon separating the “saved” from the “damned.” Even those who are liberals play the game of “we’re-more-tolerant-than-you.”

We often depend on others to understand who we are. But instead of borrowing someone else’s answers, shouldn’t we cultivate our own understanding from individual exploration? Building in the act of faith, for ourselves first, and then recognizing that this very individuality exists only through our connection with others?

Faith is, above all, openness—an act of trust in the unknown. You cannot have religion without faith, but you can have faith without religion. Belief clings, faith lets go. Hence, irrevocable commitment to any belief is not only intellectual suicide—it is positive unfaith, because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world.

Belief unsettles, it doesn’t allow reality.

Belief lies to the present, it can make us try to be better than we are, rather than being who we are.

Belief plays by the hard rules, it discriminates what could matter to us.

Belief is a close friend of “Resistance”. They play together, they seek each other. They swallow your thoughts into a thinking cycle saying “there’s a way out if you keep waiting”, it abhors finitude, it promotes the idea of “maybe tomorrow.”

This brings us to a humble recognition: you cannot have beliefs without an identity, but you can have an identity without beliefs. Understanding this concept is the essence of the leaf from the tree metaphor. So are the seasons with the tree, so we become one with it. A game of on and off; an open mind into the unknown; a reminder of what not to do.

This requires the frank recognition of your dependence upon others, even your enemies, underlings, outgroups, and, indeed, upon all other forms of life whatsoever. That being blind, intolerant, and careless about this destroys our sense of individuality altogether. That we cannot be unique…if there is no one else.

Watts hence says that the only “Book” that he would like to slip to his children would itself be slippery. It would be a temporary medicine, not a diet. In the words of Annie Dillard, knowledge “does not vanquish mystery, or obscure its distant lights.” It’s just a point of departure, not a perpetual point of reference.

To listen more… instead of speaking.

To join the herd… while also relating to others.

To cling for a while… and then let go.

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Sources

[1] The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts

[2] Meditation for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman

[3] Right Thing Right Now - Ryan Holiday

[4] Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse

[5] The Castle - Franz Kafka

This month’s reading list centres around a single theme: finding solace in doubt and uncertainty. These books explore the relationships that didn’t work, the mistakes we made, the consequences we didn’t expect, the job we didn’t get, the moments that we missed, the imperfections that make us human. We become desperate for meaning. We delve into trying to be better. As Oliver Burkeman said, we are becoming constantly obsessed with discovering how to master the situation of being a human, and that we won’t be able to relax into our lives until we do.

We need discovery, don’t get me wrong, but not around mastering how to be human. I don’t think there is an answer to that. Rather, the type of discovery we need is in embracing uncertainty and life’s inherent chaos. As the academic Wilfred McClay once pointed out, real wisdom doesn’t lie in getting life figured out; it lies in grasping the sense in which you never will get it completely figured out. It lies in learning and accepting. In our relentless pursuit of achievement and perfect outcomes, we miss the beauty of our journey, and what it meant for us to be part of it. Outcomes are so subjective, relying on the thousand things that need to happen or could have happened. We get confused by the outcomes. The more precise your vision of an outcome, the more likely you are to be disappointed. As Boyd Vardy wrote, going down a path and not finding a track is part of finding the track. It’s “the path of not here.”

Yes—things usually don’t turn out as planned. But you don’t need to abandon your dreams; just don’t let them get in the way of noticing what’s taking place. I hope you enjoy my reading list this month!

The Castle by Franz Kafka - I visited the Franz Kafka museum in Prague recently. Despite writing over a century ago (1883-1924), Kafka’s insights feel startlingly contemporary, especially his grasp of how life constantly slips away from our desires and control. “Kafkaesque” was developed as a concept to describe situations that are nightmarishly complex, bizarre, illogical, and disorienting, often leading to a feeling of helplessness and oppression. The Castle is his unfinished masterpiece, where Kafka writes the story of a man who arrives in a village for a duty that he struggles to clarify. Through complex characters and mounting frustrations, Kafka explores how individuals navigate a society that succumbs not only to oppressive authority (the castle) but to their own collective imagination of power. It brings up rules that were probably never written, letters that get lost in transit, cards and communications that arrive late or never at all. It’s a disturbing view of our own versions of reality. It rewards patient reading, drawing you into its labyrinthine world. One of my favourite quotes comes from K., the individual in question, who says that “ridiculous confusions, in some circumstances, can determine the course of a man’s life.”

The Wisdom Of Insecurity by Alan Watts - I am admiring more and more Watts for how he blends philosophy and metaphysics with insights about our collective consciousness. Last month I read The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, and I found it fascinating for its existential metaphors as wandering souls, explaining that by trying to find meaning across tribes, we have become invariably divisive and quarrelsome, brushing the world from magic. In his effort to show this paradigm, he pushes us to lean into self-knowledge, open-mindedness and exploration as the beginning of a solution. In The Wisdom of Insecurity he explains in simple terms that time itself is a creation of the restless mind, that so long as the mind is split, life is perpetual conflict, tension, frustration, and disillusion. Suffering is piled on suffering, fear on fear, and boredom on boredom. But the undivided mind is free from this tension of trying always to stand outside oneself and to be elsewhere than here and now. Each moment is lived completely, and there is thus a sense of fulfillment and completeness. This book has a bold title that echoes one of our deepest feelings and fears. I’d recommend this book over and over as a very interesting and meaningful read.

Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke - I used to read a lot of self-help, business and economic books back to back; now I find it much better to read other genres including biographies, philosophy, memoirs, fiction. As Steven Pressfield said once, sci-fi is a technological spin on a philosophical or metaphysical problem. I think reading openly has made me a stronger critic of business books, and I have to say that I was deeply satisfied with Radical Focus. Starting with a business fable that hits close home, she addresses the biggest pain points that a large group or team of individuals has when building up an idea: priorities. Under the scheme of differentiating objectives and key results, Wodtke was able to reflect some of the most important things that a manager needs to grasp to get a team towards the finish line. I found it very helpful to see examples of the different dynamics and ways to achieve results, the concept of “half-build strategies”, 2x2 charts, and what the ideal system should contain in three steps: inspiring and measurable goals, a sense of progress, and cadence for accountability.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - In my quest to read more fiction, I got this book recommended by a meaningful friend and then by another. It wasn’t long after I started reading that I couldn’t believe I let this sit on my bookshelf for so long. 478 pages that I couldn’t put down and therefore finished in three days. This book explores deep complexities around relationships, virtues, ambition, dreams, philosophy, creative endeavors, addictions, tragedy, and above everything, love. I would recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their walk of life, as both entertaining and educational. A quote that stuck with me is “this life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.” Yes, it’s hard to face life in different circumstances and find ourselves making choices that could be ethically imperfect: taking a shortcut, ignoring a principle, benefiting from something or someone. But can we avoid those decisions that we can see clearly? Not speaking up when we need to, pretending it’s not your problem because you’re not in the spotlight. So I read once that when everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease. What are the decisions that we can change for the better, today?

Govt. Cheese by Steven Pressfield - I am a fan of Pressfield. I think I quote something from him in almost everything I write. For me he is a literary hero, a warrior, an imaginary mentor when I sit to write. He is as close to raw humanity as he can get. He emerged from life’s darkest valleys and published his first novel at fifty-two, becoming Hollywood-famous with it. Much later, he published The War of Art, one of my favourite books about overcoming creative resistance. This is his memoir. In meaningful snippets, he describes categorically and harshly the different circumstances of his life and how he was deeply lost and wandering through it. “Me? I’m nobody,” he replied to others more than once, throughout his different circumstances. Quoting from the back of the book: “he worked 21 jobs in seven states including schoolteacher, attendant in a mental hospital, tractor-trailer driver, oilfield roustabout, migrant fruit picker, advertising copywriter and Hollywood screenwriter. None of this was intentional.” When I read this, how can I accept my own excuses for not pursuing what I truly want? What is anyone’s excuse not to achieve what they want? I enjoyed this reading not because it’s a story of challenge and success, but because it felt deeply honest, painful and human.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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We live in the world our questions create. But how hard is it to make a good question? Sometimes it can take us many steps to get there, stumbling, rushing, repeating ourselves. Or sometimes coming so close, to questions that are right in front of us, or on the tip of our tongues! But we fail to recognise them. Sometimes, becoming blind altogether, even all the way getting tired of doing the opposite: giving opinions… But using our fingers to count the questions asked. Winston Churchill pointed at this once by saying that people "occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

Isn't it fundamentally dangerous? To spend your life away, in the effort to question… right? Yes, awfully risky, awfully slow, terribly disappointing, to our ego, to our dreams, to our expectations… To not rush. To just ask better, next time.

But isn't it also fundamentally human? To seek, to build, to rebuild, to find ways through. To take more time. To be imperfect in your search, altogether, but at least to search for something.

It might be that you spend your whole life without getting where you wanted… But perhaps that’s what you needed, to finally get somewhere else. Somewhere different. Maybe not what you were expecting. Maybe, and just maybe, worthy of experiencing. Living. Breathing. Learning. Making something better out of where you were at. “Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most,” said entrepreneur Naval Ravikant.

What to do, then, if you want to live in a world that’s at least close to the one you've always imagined? What to make, if you want to ask better questions? I can only say that I have one part of the answer for you. It’s three words: read, read, read. To keep an open mind and find ways to learn new perspectives. To give up on a fixed mind and be fluid in a text of possibilities. To navigate and debate all writers: the dead and the ones living. Those who spent their lives away trying to question right. Following their path of thinking and placing the next stone on the way. How cool it is to be able to find a book and to exercise its ideas, and maybe, just maybe (why not?) on a daily basis? Here are the ones that made my reading list for this month!

The Giver by Lois Lowry - When this book was released in 1993 it was partially banned because of its reference to sensitive themes like euthanasia, suicide and infanticide. It later became a bestseller, though I initially missed the deeper reason for its fame: the author’s intention of showing what it’s like having a totalitarian authority controlling the community over their sense of individuality. Lowry shows us what a world would be like if it was in black and white, with someone else choosing what you eat, what you speak, what you know about history (imagine—no memories from the past!), and what your purpose in life is. Identity loss. Monotonous living. Rules following, and you won’t be punished. The irony is that one person serves as the 'memory' holder, someone that has access to all the things and thoughts that the community cannot access, so that there can be proper advice against mistakes that the authority can commit. But what if the next memory holder decides that’s enough? That everyone needs to see the colours, and have the right to choose? This book is a light read and I highly recommend it!

The Book on The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts - Written in 1966, this became one of the most meaningful books I've encountered this year. I found Watts by watching the movie Her (2013); he appears as another AI subject somewhere in the middle of the movie and his role was to discuss and make sense of the reality of artificial intelligence as an individual. Watts represents one of the first authors to bridge Eastern thought into the Western world. This book touches various important themes such as our metaphysical sense of reality (whether as a biological being or a system of electronic patterns, which we already are in some ways), the sense of our ego, the need for an opposite, and the double-bind game that we play in society, losing ourselves in the process: “The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.” Watts describes and continues, “everyone must play. You must love us. You must go on living. Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role. Control yourself and be natural. Try to be sincere.” Yet, it is because of this double-bind game that we have scrubbed the world clean of magic, and by trying to find meaning across tribes, we have become invariably divisive and quarrelsome. In this sense, along an enriching view from different angles, Watts urges us to develop our self-knowledge, our own perspective and expressions, and to experience our actions and those of others with as much contemplation as possible.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut - This is a deep and at times painful work of fiction written by one of the classic American authors. Vonnegut makes allusion to his own time as a prisoner of war during the Second World War, and further release and coming back to a normal civilised life in America. The protagonist makes decisions without emotion, suffering from being 'unstuck in time' and traveling across different ages of his life while also being abducted to an alien planet. With often very descriptive scenes of the war and how American prisoners were being captured and taken by the Nazis, the author makes allusion to the often overlooked psychological reality for those who are in imprisonment torture conditions and suddenly are not. “How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.” And also at some points to the changes in fortune, “why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?”

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman - Already one of my favorites this year. I am a big fan of the writings from Burkeman and I subscribed to his newsletter “The Imperfectionist”. His previous book " is a book that I recommend to anyone who wants to grasp their own concepts of happiness by using philosophy and mortality as tenets. In his new book, Burkeman divides his writing into four blocks, and invites us to read one chapter per day for four weeks and be contemplative about their meaning (I read them in one week). The blocks are split first on being finite; second on taking action; third on letting go; and fourth on showing up. Although the concepts might sound repetitive for those of us who have been reading long lengths of modern philosophy contents out there, I learned really good perspectives for each block. There is this sense of feeling much better with myself after I read something from Oliver Burkeman. I praise his work and I highly recommend it to everyone!

Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare & Co by Jeremy Mercer - I learned about this book while visiting The Gently Mad Book Shop & Bookbinder in Edinburgh. The owner recommended it to me as I was telling him how fascinating it would be to have a bookshop like his; everything it must have taken him and the experiences he has grown into. “You should read Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs” he said, and I immediately ordered it. The author, Jeremy Mercer writes his experience as a journalist in the beginning of the new century, escaping his home country (Canada) into Paris; quickly running out of money and looking for a place to sleep, when he found out the bookshop Shakespeare & Co and learned that this quirky place hosted writers to sleep over for free. Under the Bible tenet “be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise,” the bookshop founder, George Whitman, quickly welcomed Jeremy and together with a group of nomad authors, with no money and high dreams. The story walks through the fascinating background of George and his travels, the dreams and challenges of each guest, the spirit and management of the place, and its roots from the original bookshop Shakespeare & Co by Sylvia Beach (Link to her own book here). Sylvia was the only publisher who trusted James Joyce's work Ulysses and published it in 1922, as well as a mention of other famous authors of the era that passed by, such as Ernest Hemingway. The original bookshop was supposedly closed during WWII as the Germans were concerned for the creative nonconformity and Sylvia’s undisputable stand against totalitarianism in art. With my girlfriend, I had the chance to visit the bookshop this past month and it’s wonderful how they still preserve many of the facets from the time of this book (25 years ago), but there was mixed feedback on whether they’re still letting people sleep in for free.

Montaigne by Stefan Zweig - Ryan Holiday's recommendation led me to this book. Stefan Zweig was capable of describing in this short biography how the high-born Michel de Montaigne, struggling to meet the expectations from society, decided to leave behind his life of wealth to take refuge in a tower with his books and his thoughts for over a decade. In the process, he constantly read and wrote his famous essays, he discovered his own maxims and those which are so hard to attain, even for himself: to seek his interior self, that one which Goethe calls the “citadel”. On the beams of the ceiling, he paints fifty-four Latin maxims, so that wherever his glance falls, it finds a sagacious and soothing word. Only the final one is in French, the famous “Que-sais je?” or What do I know? To which he always tries to set as an end maxim across his opinions. Stefan Zweig makes wonderful allusions to the essence of Montaigne essays, appreciating the fact that he discovered them twice, once when he was very young in his adolescence, and secondly in the last stage of his life. “The outside world can take nothing from you and cannot unhinge you, as long as you do not allow yourself to be disturbed…For one of life’s mysterious laws shows that we only notice the authentic and essential values when it’s too late: youth, once it has fled, health, at the moment it abandons us, freedom of the soul, that most precious essence, at the very moment when it is taken from us, or has already been taken.” The sad part though, is that consumed by despair over the Second World War in Europe, and after carefully taking some of Montaigne’s words, Zweig and his wife took their own lives with an overdose while living in Brazil in 1942. It's a shocking and tragic irony for someone who wrote so beautifully about finding inner peace.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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Author Shane Parrish once pointed out that everyone wants the summary. But the summary is what's left after someone else decided what matters. Their priorities aren't yours. Their filters aren't yours. When you operate on summaries, you're thinking with someone else's brain. I keep coming back to this as I read and explore books and recommendations. Which is why I find that the best way to read the right things is a combination of knowing yourself, understanding your threshold for complex ideas and how far you have explored your own sources for what to read next. It’s kind of what I try to achieve every month by sharing my reading list. It’s kind of what I love to discuss with others too. I hope you enjoy my reading list for this month!

Travels with Epicurus: Meditations from a Greek Island on the Pleasures of Old Age by Daniel Klein - This might be one of my favorite reads ever, and is perfect for an accessible yet profound entry into philosophy. I discovered it through Ryan Holiday, who highlighted this powerful passage: “I remember one long-ago evening, on an overcrowded train to Philadelphia, hearing a young woman moan to her mother, ‘God I wish we were there already!’ Her white-haired mother replied eloquently, ‘Darling, never wish away a minute of your life.’” Klein combines an academic background in philosophy and lived experiences, exploring the merits of old age while actually traveling to a Greek island. He covers a lot of ground in Epicureanism in very relatable terms with close to 150 pages. His journey explores existentialism, our interpretation of time, moderation, solitude, relationships, among others.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson - This work is one of the best explorations I’ve read on wealth and happiness and I reread it every six to twelve months. I learned about it by following one of my idols, Tim Ferriss. We can categorize this as a business book, but it also feels like self-help and fundamental thinking. I know Naval as the founder of AngelList, a platform successfully connecting startup founders with investors to connect ideas. But he has also been behind investing in very successful startups like Uber, Twitter and Postmates. This book gives you a glance to challenge the status quo and also knowing where you want to stop. It is a good reminder that, in a goal-oriented life, 99% of our efforts are wasted, and only 1% pays off. It is also a good reminder that both wealth and happiness are intertwined, that both are choices and that they are also skills that you need to develop. This book is also available to download for free here.

Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan - This is one of the most technical books I’ve read this month and my interest grew in understanding what does product management mean in organizations and why is the variance so meaningful. It’s a “how-to” 101 book on product management. I’ve learned about Cagan by trying to explore the most exhaustive books on the topic. Despite it references case studies on Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—I actually found more value in his exploration about how to create better roadmaps, how to manage technical expectations, how to build the fundamentals of a leader that wears multiple hats, how to drive a successful product design, and last but not least, a summary of Ben Horowitz’s Good Product Manager / Bad Product Manager. I’d recommend this book for starting product managers and take an approach to follow up referenced books inside the text. I hope to continue exploring these topics in my next reading lists too.

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to exploit the crisis points that challenge every company and career by Andrew Grove - There is a proverb that I turn to often when facing challenging situations: "anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm”. This book brings a strategic view on recognizing a shifting environment and what to do about it. Grove was the third employee and eventual CEO of Intel Corporation, the largest semiconductor company in the world. His famous work High Output Management is said to have revolutionized the business world for its focus on things we can measure. But whether you own a company or you are taking an introspection in your own skillset, this book takes a different, humble approach on our ability to recognize points of change. He brings one of the most eloquent views by saying that the best tools to recognize shifting signals are “instinct and judgement”. For me it feels like both concepts are intertwined. On the one hand, instinct feels like a result of your continuous ability to learn from experience and take decisions with leverage on outcomes. On the other hand, judgement helps us remain flexible to the changing environment, building wisdom by becoming really good at something and understanding the signals when they happen. Outside of this topic, another book I’d recommend to learn more about global semiconductors development after Grove’s Intel experience is Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - A 1922 masterpiece. “Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom” is the blurb in this famous work by Hesse. It is a fictional tale of a young man who was born around the same time as Buddha and makes an exploration to find enlightenment and inner peace throughout Eastern philosophy. Hesse beautifully explores points on Buddhism and Hinduism in a simple but deep way. One dialogue struck me in Siddhartha’s journey when he meets a merchant, and the merchant in his commercial interest asks “what is it now what you’ve got to give? What is it that you’ve learned, what you’re able to do?” And Siddhartha responds “I can think. I can wait. I can fast.” Interpretations of this answer can vary, but how much do we undermine those three things, yet how crucial they are in our own journeys?

The Coaching Habit: Say less, ask more & change the way you lead forever by Michael Bungay Stanier - If you are looking to understand a model on how to improve your relationships with colleagues throughout crucial conversations, this book is a great starter. The author categorizes coaching under two branches: that for performance and that for development; this book is an exploration of the second. He points out that the hardest part to recognize in coaching is our irresistible ability to try to give advice to others when situations turn difficult. Even more, what’s harder to recognize is what does “help” mean once the real challenge comes through. Bungay brings seven questions to recognize how the person you are looking to help can find a fundamental solution to problems, and once that’s clear, to identify the best ways that you can help. “People don’t really learn when you tell them something.” writes Bungay on learning, “they don’t even really learn when they do something. They start learning, start creating new neural pathways only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.”

Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds by Ryan Holiday - I have explored Holiday’s series on the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism: Courage, Discipline, Justice and Wisdom. Holiday explores the strength of the hardest virtue, “Justice,” with multiple historical events and people to relate to philosophical learnings. This time, using the lives of the U.S. President Harry Truman, Mahatma Gandhi, the emancipation, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights, and many other history-changing events. Rather than waiting for perfect moments to act justly, Holiday shows us that the Stoics believed we should see every person we meet as an opportunity for kindness. A strong aphorism that I am still thinking about: “It’s easier to be a great man than a good one.” In our hunt for material gains and accomplishments, what would the world look like if more people decided to try to see who helped the most people? Or who could forgive the most grievous wrong? Or who prevented the battle instead of won it?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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In The Banshees of Inisherin, two lifelong friends sit in an Irish pub in the middle of nowhere. Colm (Brendan Gleeson) decides their friendship is over, while Padraic (Collin Farrell) doesn’t understand why and desperately tries to salvage their friendship.

“Now I’m sittin’ here next to you, and if you’re goin’ back inside, I’m followin’ you inside, and if you’re goin’ home, I’m followin’ you there, too.” Says Padraic in almost a falter tone and continues, “now, if I’ve done somethin’ to ya, just tell me what I’ve done to ya. And if I’ve said somethin’ to ya, maybe I said somethin’ when I was drunk, and I’ve forgotten it, but I don’t think I said somethin’ when I was drunk, and I’ve forgotten it. But if I did, then tell me what it was, and I’ll say sorry for that too, Colm. With all me heart, I’ll say sorry. Just stop running away from me like some fool of a moody schoolchild.”

To which Colm, staring directly to Padraic eyes and in a very still tone responds,

“But you didn’t say anything to me. And you didn’t do anything to me. I just don’t like you no more.”

“You do like me.”

“I don’t.”

“But you liked me yesterday.”

“Oh, did I, yeah?”

“I thought you did.”

As the conversation goes on, Colm decides to withdraw from Padraic (See Scene Here). And the next day, Colm points out clearly how he has decided to move on from their friendship because he needs to “spend the time I have left thinking and composing,” not wasting it away in consistent aimless chatting like two hours talking “about the things you found in your little donkey’s shite that day.” To which Padraic declines and argues that is indeed relevant.

This unusual dialogue is an anatomy of how relationships die. Despite being in a remote place of Ireland during the Irish Civil War in 1923, it shows how one person evolves, the other stays stuck, and neither knows how to bridge the gap.

It’s relationship chaos, and it’s not my intention to make you judge. After all, I would also get tired if someone is talking non-stop about their pet’s crap for two hours. Rather, it’s about recognising that we’ve all heard or said the excuses: “This is the way I am.” “They are not a positive friendship to me.” “I never learned anything different.” Understanding why we’d rather stay stuck than do the hard work is the key to building relationships that last instead of constantly starting over.

After making mistakes and bringing unintended consequences.

After dozing off on solutions and letting time pass.

After losing our way to where peace was present.

Then we tell ourselves our situation is unique. That no one else would understand. That we're ethically right and they're not. This thinking isn’t just wrong, but also dangerous. It prevents us from seeing the patterns that destroy our relationships.

Moreover, psychologists have found that our biggest regrets aren't about chances we took—they're about relationships we abandoned. It's been said that secrets usually involve things we’re ashamed of, and one of those seems that often we return to our memories and regret actions that triggered a withdrawal.

But why would you? Like Colm, maybe in a random place in Ireland that has less than a hundred people, you might have found a better path to your passion and identity. You have moved on. Yes — life may have brought other wonderful friends, maybe a new partner. Yes — you might also have moved on from them into new ones. Yes — a damaged relationship can mean significant pain and sometimes the best thing is to be apart. But how do we know when it is healthy to grab opportunities to recover someone? How do we avoid future regrets?

I’d rather take a step further back and ask, how do we start a relationship without the need to toss and likely “recover” later on? Does it have to do with “evolving” as a human being and finding new people along the way? Why do we need to normalize to move on from people so much?

The good news is that you don’t need to, but it is hard not doing so.

Different research points out that it’s a complex but straight result of our childhood and later self-awareness. Starting from accepting that relationships are unavoidable, that people are born into them—with parents, with surroundings, with ancestors—and that they create us in our formative years. Hence, the more you know about how your caregivers impacted you, the more prepared you will be to face your relationships with everyone.

Even more, having social connections is one of the strongest determinants of our happiness. It expands our identity and it helps us build perspective. Loneliness can be more fatal than a poor diet or lack of exercise, as corrosive as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.

In other words, no matter how much you believe that you’d rather be alone, you’re naturally not made for loneliness. Opposite to that, friendships can literally save our lives. And most of us don’t know how to be involved with people because we don’t know who we are and what we want.

But even as you change, your relationships can remain strong, especially those with friends. To understand how, we have to learn how each of us see relationships in general. Psychologists call this attachment theory, and generally there are three types (there’s also a test at the end of this essay if you’re curious about yours),

• The avoidant: Raised by emotionally distant parents, they learned that closeness equals danger. These children lack opportunities to explore the world and are confined within the realm of restrictions. In making life choices (moving out, entering new worlds, making big decisions), they’d often find that others want to pull them into more closeness than what’s comfortable. They tend to end relationships more frequently, or suppress loving emotions. For them, It is important to maintain independence and self-sufficiency, and often prefer autonomy to intimate relationships.

• The ambivalent (or anxious): Raised in chaos, they learned that love is unpredictable. These children are more fearful than other children. They are more likely to perceive threats. Their life choices are situated with fear first. Relationships tend to consume a large part of their emotional energy. They tend to act out and say things that they later regret. They would interpret calmness in a relationship as a lack of attraction because they don’t know what calmness is.

• The secure: Raised with consistent love, they learned that relationships are safe. They give others the benefit of the doubt and work through problems instead of running away. What kids need most are safety and exploration. They need to feel loved but they also need to go out into the world and to take care of themselves. Despite the fact that parents don’t have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed at this, many still underestimate the need to provide stable and predictable rhythms to a child’s life. They don’t get easily upset over relationship matters. A secure person can drive most relationships into stability, no matter if there’s a rollercoaster of a type on the other side.

To break down types of relationships on a high level, author Angela Chen reveals that we feel romantic (heady passion and idealisation of someone), sexual (desire to have sex with someone), or platonic (appreciation and liking toward someone) separately.

This could mean three things. First, most secure and stable people are out of the romantic market already. They are already likely engaged in a relationship. So if you are looking for your meaningful other, there is a higher chance that you will encounter anxious or avoidant people. Second, you can bring stability to most of these relationships by having at least one of you be a secure or self-aware person (it can be you!). Third, an underestimated point is that the same attachment styles apply not only to romance but also to our friends (platonic).

In her book Platonic, author Marisa Franco points to the secure or self-aware types as “super friends”, who are people expert at making and keeping friends. With relationships that are also closer and more enduring, research finds that these people also flourish in their personal lives, with better mental health, open to new ideas, harbour less prejudice, are satisfied at work, and are viewed more positively by others. They are also less regretful and remain calm under pressure, better able to withstand life's punches. They are even less likely to have physical ailments like headaches, stomach troubles, or inflammation.

Super friends don’t seek revenge for other people’s actions in their relationship. Rather, they see most negative events in the relationship like accidents. They are forgiving and give the benefit of doubt, reassuring that everything is okay. They internalise that they are connected to others by their history of abundant love with their caregivers. Making a mistake, they would respond differently:

Did you say something hurtful to them? Probably unintended, but it's good to clarify.

Did you miss the special event? You might have something more urgent or forgotten, worth having a call about it.

Did you act wrong? You likely were not aware, better to show by example.

Franco points out that, aside from their secure attachment or self-awareness, super friends not only know what they can offer, but they also recognise that not everyone can be a best friend. They understand that friendships take work and initiative. But also that there are people from whom they should expect less (such as a two-hour talk about a donkey’s stool). They kindly communicate what they need from others, and ask and clarify how they can better support. They understand that the goal is to focus on what feels most fulfilling about each relationship.

Super friends are also authentic, unique to themselves and to the friendship. They live in the middle, far from bluntly expressing what they want, think or feel (that’s rawness), and also away from saying anything at all (that’s withdrawal). They act in a way that balances others’ needs, responding without reacting, setting boundaries, care, space. Acting opposite to a super friend, we could trigger some of the opposite behaviors seen as follow,

• If we can’t tolerate feeling inadequate, we may get defensive in conflict.

• If we can’t tolerate our anger, we may act passive-aggressively or aggressively.

• If we can’t tolerate rejection, we may violate friends’ boundaries.

• If we can’t tolerate anxiety, we may try to control our friends.

• If we can’t tolerate guilt, we may overextend ourselves with friends.

• If we can’t tolerate feeling flawed, we may fail to apologize when warranted, blame others, or tell people they’re sensitive or dramatic when they have an issue with us.

• If we can’t tolerate feeling insignificant, we may dominate others.

• If we can’t tolerate sadness, we may avoid friends who need support.

• If we can’t tolerate tension, we may withdraw from friends instead of addressing problems.

• If we can’t tolerate feeling insecure, we may brag about ourselves while putting down our friends.

• If we can’t tolerate feeling unliked, we may act like someone we’re not.

It is a revelation of our identity to be part of any of these. But it is a lack of self awareness to continuously repeat them. It is worth noticing that over 2/3 of people remain with the same attachment style throughout their lives, so the secret sauce is in understanding yourself first before diving into others. By understanding your weaknesses, learning how to be loved, and taking care of yourself, you could select and achieve your stability goals towards others.

Painfully, on the other hand, sometimes we need to fail with someone to realise where we are in the attachment theory. Or even worse, that by trying to become secure, you would still not get reciprocity on the other side. Sometimes, the response might also be to distance and move on. But when you make a mistake, realise that those are where learning sits, where growth starts. Without mistakes, you would have missed your gained awareness, the people that currently surround you, and your ability to be human in this journey. And if you have an opportunity to fix relationships, take it. I think it is wonderful to always have an opportunity to be brave and honest.

The attachment type test

Authors Amir Levine and Rachel Heller wrote one of my favorite books on relationships, Attached, and has a great test to identify your attachment style to start with. Luckily I found the PDF online and I am also attaching it here. I would strongly urge you to do this test, the goal is to check the small box next to each statement that is TRUE for you. (If the answer is untrue, don’t mark the item at all.) The more statements that you check in a category, the more you will display characteristics of the corresponding attachment style. Category A represents the anxious attachment style, Category B represents the secure attachment style, and Category C represents the avoidant attachment style.

Attachment Style Test

41.1KB ∙ PDF file

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How easy it is to hear about great relationships from others and say “I wish I could have a relationship like that.” Rarely you’d find this option on the table but the answer is that you can be that friend right now. Reciprocity commands in relationships, initiative commands reciprocity, it’s never too late to start.

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Sources

[1] Platonic: How Understanding Your Attachment Style Can Help You Make and Keep Friends by Marisa G. Franco PhD

[2] Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love by Amir Levine (Author), Rachel Heller (Author)

[3] The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

The best book recommendations don’t come from algorithms, but from a friend who grabs your arm in a bookstore and says, “You have to read this.” It was the case this past month as I toured with one of my best friends to a favourite bookshop in London, Waterstones at Gower Street. I get too excited when I bring someone new to this bookshop because there are over 200,000 titles under one roof. So, I take my time to walk them through the sections, share the books I'm enjoying, and ask what they're reading in return. You can find me randomly there any day of the week. These moments feel almost spiritual to me. I hope you like my list today!

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin - “The only thing to fear is fear itself”, said American president Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Great Depression in the early 30’s, words that proved prophetic. This book masterfully shows the evolution of the President's relationship with European powers during the Second World War, and the challenges rising in America: war production, racism, women entering the workforce, Japanese conditions, post-war plans, the case for the United Nations, among others. A highly recommended read to illustrate the creation of Modern America. I enjoy reading the behind-the-scenes stories of impactful people and gaining insight into their humanity. I also wrote about it here. It also struck me to find Eleanor say “to be nearly sixty and still rebel at uncertainty is ridiculous isn’t it,” to an insomniac Franklin as he secretly confessed the military plans the night before D-Day, the invasion of France to recover from the Nazis. I couldn’t stop myself after reading Leadership in Turbulent Times last month, also by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a perennial work on the ambitions, fears, challenges, and strategies of some great American presidents.

Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madson - This book is so well made and easy to read that I finished it on the same day. Steven Pressfield recommended this in The War of Art, one of my favourite books on creativity and losing the fear in ambiguous endeavours. The structure dictates thirteen principles, not only for improvisation but also perspective in our own ideas, from “pay attention” and “make mistakes, please”, to “start anywhere” and “don’t prepare”. As I begin to write publicly, I find it hard to weigh the value I am adding through my writing, especially when only a handful of people are actually reading. But Madson's reference to Anne Frank shifted my perspective: “How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment; we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway...And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!”.

The Forty Rules of Love: The magical tale of love and self-discovery by Elif Shafak - “You have to read The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak, it’s a book about Rumi’s life,” said my friend while touring together in one of my favourite bookshops. I’ve been curious about the legendary poet Rumi and his writings for a while, so I immediately gave it a go; what a book! A masterpiece of metaphors and the meaningful encounter and life of Rumi meeting Shams Tabrizi in the 13th century. Although it fictionalises their historic encounter, the two poets embark together on a journey to discover pure spiritualism through Sufism, a branch of Islam. With it, Elif Shafak points out forty rules that break down feelings, virtues, and acts of goodness through Sufism. I think it's a spiritual and refreshing read to compass from time to time. One of the rules that I enjoyed the most is “If you want to change the ways others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.” I really enjoyed this book, and it drove me to buy a collection of poems by Rumi that I will start reading slowly from time to time.

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant - A masterful whole-in-one non-fiction piece of book taking place in far-east Russia, a place where “neither political correctness nor eco-speak have penetrated, and patriotism is vigorous and impassioned.” The book tells the real story of the hunt of a tiger that is a man-eater, while the tiger is also hunting other people and causing havoc. An animal that “will see you a hundred times before you see him once.” A creature with astonishing memory, power, size, and survival capability and also in danger of extinction. Vaillant powerfully illustrates the connections between multiple realities, including Russian history within a geopolitical context, China, the black economy, and many of the challenges that people face and how they must adapt to nature’s conditions, or has nature adapted to them? Another book by the same author that I’d recommend is Fire Weather, also an incredible real story of the effects of climate change on a small town in Western Canada.

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis - Having just explored WWII America, I jumped into this novel, written about the United States becoming a dictatorship in 1935 during the heyday of Fascism in Europe, coincidentally set during Roosevelt's presidency. I find it fascinating that there are patterns throughout history regarding how dictatorial governments behave and the reasoning behind their actions. A deep line of thinking in this book quotes, “Is it just possible that the most vigorous and boldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators? Possible that plain men with the humble trait of minding their own business will rank higher in the heavenly hierarchy than all the plumed souls who have shoved their way in among the masses and insisted on saving them?” I think it is necessary to understand the actions, simply because they have been observed across different eras. It is rare to have an exactly similar scenario, but history shows us that rare events shape our world.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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A few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Harry Hopkins found himself in a curious position in the White House in December of 1941. Acting as a trusted advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hopkins would spend night after night in the Oval Office either hearing Roosevelt’s entertaining stories, his concerns, helping prepare domestic and international war strategies, or revising drafts for executive orders, speeches and words…

That shaped the destiny of the American home front.

That played against the fear of the Nazis annihilation menace of the western front.

That came in the darkest hour, with millions of lives sacrificed and many more at risk.

But this time, he was noticing their British guest, Winston Churchill, as he prepared a speech to deliver the next day to the American Senate. As Prime Minister of Britain, Churchill’s goal was to reaffirm the British and American solid Allied position against the Axis powers. So Hopkins was in a unique position to contrast the U.S. president's speech rituals with those of the Prime Minister.

Churchill was a writer and storyteller first, and then a politician, known for delivering some ten million words and over forty books during his lifetime, honing his skills through years of retirement and vigorous debate in the House of Commons. He liked to think on his feet, dictating his speeches as he paced up and down the room, or sometimes writing alone. He used to imagine that a large crowd had already assembled, with most of his phrases emerging from his head and his heart. Entering his world, “you would hear him mutter so often the same phrase in a different way,” said his secretary Grace Hamblin, “you could easily put him out if you entered a line in the wrong place,”. Always quiet before making his speech to the audience, “It is dangerous to speak to him,” as Royal Navy Officer C.R. Thompson pointed out once.

On the other hand, Roosevelt, marking history with over sixteen hundred speeches and almost one thousand press conferences, wasted “little time in turning phrases,” according to Hopkins, “he tries to say what is in his mind in the shortest and simplest words… Always thinks of individuals, never of a crowd.” Usually writing alone for a first draft, then sharing it, and later bringing new ideas and punchlines up to his fifth draft. Roosevelt knew when to move forward and when to pull back, not only in his speeches but also in his broader politics. “I am like a cat,” he once said. “I make a quick stroke and then I relax.”

The remarkable experience that Hopkins had while watching the two world leaders pursue the most creative and careful act of selecting and expressing their words in a critical and far from ordinary time.

Day in and day out, throughout the Second World War, every individual faced their own struggle. From the fear of military conscription to the absence of news of other family members already in the trenches of war. From the foggy times surrounding the war strategy to the unknowns of the economy, education and social changes in their communities. Facing rationing and scoring cards that were not only considering precious food, but also gas, clothing, even coffee, and life's most essential goods. Mothers supporting their children alone, and later on, other orphans too.

In America, people were facing the angst of waking up every morning thinking of the loss of another Pearl Harbor. In England, the British citizens were encountering the continuous bombing and destruction of London sites during the Blitz, awaiting to hear more on the situation in neighbouring European cities, and with them their broken morale as they slept in underground stations to protect themselves.

Yet, through it all, both Western leaders, Churchill and Roosevelt, brought light through their leadership, showcasing the power of words that were either shared directly or translated and sometimes smuggled into different European languages via radio or newspapers. People patiently waited for words that would shift the emotions of millions in the West, words that would shed hope for those surviving in the East.

People counted on them, but how fascinating is that not only were both Churchill and Roosevelt war heroes, but also ordinary and imperfect men?

Churchill was prone to overcommitting and missing politeness even in the most crucial moments, while Roosevelt was known for his evasive answers and relationships. They were not recognised for having exemplary marriages with Mrs Churchill or Eleanor Roosevelt. They were not praised by their parenting either. On one hand, Churchill had a troubled relationship with his children, expecting too much from them, in one case with Randolph, whose outcome became a struggle with alcoholism throughout his life. And on the other hand, Franklin, with his five children, who would go on to have eighteen divorces among them.

Both leaders had insecurities, they faced sadness, they were not perfect all the time. They were human. Yet, how were they able to hold their highest leadership positions in government? How were they able to face the span of thousands of ideas and quotes that inspired millions, and later coordinate the hardship of war when they overcame the fight against fascism and evil?

One word, but a million meanings: Action.

Both Churchill and Roosevelt were pursuing a common goal, achieving an aim, repeating it over and over, driven by great focus and at least a little imagination to find a solution. Despite their imperfections, they found themselves in particular positions at a critical time and knew they needed to rise to the occasion.

They wanted to improve. They needed to help. People were waiting for them. “Do you realise we are making history?” said Churchill to his companion Lord Moran, before presenting himself for another speech.

It was their courage that made them rise to the challenge every day. Their bravery inspired others, turning ideas into agreement, facing and overcoming resistance. It was also in the wonders of this virtue that President Andrew Jackson said two centuries ago, “One man with courage makes a majority”.

Also in a similar vein was the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, who responded in three words in Latin to the followers of René Descartes: “Verum Ipsum Factum,” or “truth is itself something made,” thereby challenging those who believe that truth is discovered through observation and reason alone. Like Vico's philosophy, both Western leaders understood that truth emerges through action, not just contemplation.

Remaining still in crucial times? The Western leaders couldn’t afford it, but they also didn’t know what the right decision was; with thousands of urgent distractions and competing views, they just tried and learned with everything they had.

They crafted essential teams, they managed roadblocking relationships, they made mistakes, they made bold decisions, they took their chances and risked the balance of millions in the military, and more than once, they also wasted time. Yet with the clock ticking, they kept moving forward. “I felt as though I was walking with destiny,” said Churchill when he became Prime Minister at the beginning of the war, “and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

We often gamble with the thought of failure, of learning and doing something because of the fear behind it, of our blocks and limitations, of the unknown ahead. We underestimate the power of our words and everything they can create. We overlook our capacity for courage. But in the moments where the two Western leaders realised their opportunity, they also realised once again that they couldn’t escape their feelings, that they are natural and universal. For them, just as for us, it was the same as every other opportunity in the face of growth.

Action cures fear, even when fear is unavoidable. “To be nearly sixty and still rebel at uncertainty is ridiculous isn’t it,” said Eleanor Roosevelt to an insomniac Franklin as he secretly confessed the military plans the night before D-Day, the invasion of France to recover from the Nazis.

Both Churchill and Roosevelt kept doing their speeches; they inspired, they cared. They learned that fear just shows us how much we want to succeed. Waiting for things to be simple can become a prison. In acting through chaos, they created order. By being present in the moment, they shaped our past.

It was action that brought Churchill’s courage to regather the army in the lowest period of the war and find himself at Westminster saying, “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.…” And later on at Harrow School, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy…”

Action also drove FDR during the Great Depression with his uplifting words, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” as he made a plan to save America from its darkest financial times. During a low point in the war, sharing in a state of union the “four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.” It also made him write in his last speech, saved for the posthumous, “the only limit to our realisation of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”

The call for action is chasing us, and in moments like these, it will keep chasing us. It’s a personal one, but nonetheless also an important one.

Harry Hopkins witnessed something profound that night in December: two very different men united by a single truth. When history demanded action, they didn't wait for certainty. They spoke. They acted. They led. Facing evil, the words that kept emerging from them were driving a message not only about the hope in the war, but also how perseverance and action are often the only things missing to overcome obstacles and win our internal battles.

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Sources

[1] No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II - Doris Kearns Goodwin

[2] Constant Revision: How Churchill Polished His Writing - The Churchill Project, Hillsdale College

[3] Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up - Patricia Ryan Madson

[4] Courage is Calling - Ryan Holiday

[5] Churchillbookcollector.com - Photographies

I spend most of my flexible time reading books, yet I often find myself thinking about my inability to navigate challenges when they arise. A wrong response, hurt feelings, negative thinking, resentment or ego. I mentioned this irony to a friend this week. “It could have been worse,” he said, “imagine if you didn’t read those books, how much longer and worse it would have been to overcome whatever you’re going through?”

It sounded right. Books or any type of new knowledge could help us cope or drive a short-term response, but their real value is in long-term investment. In the long run, knowledge gives us control and choice. It gives us awareness to separate external circumstances from our decision-making. I take my time to choose the right books, and these are the ones I’ve read in the past month:

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick - It’s not a surprise that when we think about AI we are only imagining all these fiction movies where robots take us over, and the world dramatically ends, or maybe less dramatic, like losing our jobs (I think about the movie Her which is creepy enough and you can already start doing it today using Grok voiceover). However, this book is one great thing I’ve read to calm my mind and ignore the noise on social media. The Industrial Revolution brought an 18-22 per cent increase in labour productivity. Now, with AI, we're seeing productivity increases of up to 80 percent, and it’s mostly affecting the output in career-tier jobs. However, Mollick argues for the need to start adopting AI fast and think abundantly about it. Need an idea to move a project forward? Ask AI for ten options and rank them. Developing a comprehensive project plan for a leadership report? Ask AI twenty different ways the project can be challenged. Mollick’s argument is not only that you will do things better with AI, but you're uniquely positioned to leverage it in your field since you alone understand the nuances of your profession. I don’t use AI for writing, which is killing the entire purpose of my benefit from it, but I do ask for its perspective during editing. There will always be a need to be the human in the loop.

The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life by Boyd Varty - Joseph Campbell said, “If you can see your whole life’s path laid out, then it’s not your life’s path”. A great and unconventional book on leadership that came out from Boyd's experience as a safari guide in South Africa, which led him to become a life coach. This book is full of gems. It’s a light and wonderful read on the importance of finding your own tracker in life, and how we have forgotten that life holds a unique story for each of us. What I also appreciate about this story is the importance of hardship and how sometimes it is necessary to get lost to bring out our best, or as Varty says, “the hazard of modern times is the danger of no danger”. The world is waiting for us to discover our path and be one of those masters who can “be themselves in any situation,” and also appreciate “look at the thing you have seen a thousand times and always see something new”. A highly recommended read, I learned about Varty by reading Martha Beck’s "The Way of Integrity" (also an amazing book).

Of Boys and Men: Why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it by Richard Reeves - My girlfriend recommended this book because Richard Reeves was coming to town and she was hosting him for a talk on male gender dynamics. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put the book down. I was unaware of the statistics documenting male decline, and how this trend affects lower socioeconomic classes while also touching my own life and community. In our capitalist, workaholic culture, even as we've made progress toward gender equality, we're seeing growing numbers of lonely, directionless men drawn to toxic communities like incels, violence, and misogyny (If you haven’t watched Adolescence, you’re missing out). Worse still, both left and right-wing political parties are exacerbating the imbalance with counterproductive approaches. On the left side, we are kind of telling men, “you’re lonely and suicidal because you’re toxic. Stop it!” On the right side, we reminisce about the old days when men were the household breadwinners. Both sides are equally unhelpful. Instead, Reeves brings some pragmatic proposals to tackle the struggle of men constructively (He also launched the American Institute for Boys and Men, worth checking!).

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee - I’m looking for ways to improve my nonfiction writing, and John McPhee is a literature legend of transforming ordinary topics into the most compelling narratives (If you don’t believe me you can check his book about Oranges). In Draft No. 4, he describes his insights from writing more than thirty acclaimed works. Detailing how he interviewed, created, and compiled fascinating stories, as well as his approach to the structuring stories. What inspires me the most about his story is the ability to be consistent not only in his writing habit but also in his unconventional thinking to find the right words to say (even using dictionaries to find the meaning of certain words and replacing them with a deeper description). I will have this book present as a reminder of exploration and creativity.

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head (And How to Harness It) by Ethan Kross - I was struggling to balance personal life with professional changes while battling impostor syndrome. I threw it out there to a friend, saying that it was this voice in my head telling me that I wasn’t enough. Her immediate response was, “You should read Chatter,” nodding her head convincingly. I ordered it immediately. What a book! We all have an inner voice, an avid time traveller and relentless critic. Chatter is a form of repetitive, anxious thought and a marvellous saboteur that comes during focused tasks. How often do we revisit moments with guilt, pain, or regret over thoughts or things someone said to us? How often do we enter a meeting to say crucial things, audition or competition, only to feel like we are failing right from the start? Moreover, how much mental baggage do we carry from our family, friends, colleagues, and society, and how do we find ways to deal with them? It’s all in our heads, and Kross sorts it in his book with a clear, well-written framework, historical record, and many ways to deal with the chatter in our minds.

Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin - I'm drawn to American presidential history and its overcoming stories. This book is a mark in my life and is easily one of the best ones I have ever read. I have highlighted most of the pages. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin brings a fascinating narrative on four presidents that shaped the nation during crucial periods: Abraham Lincoln during the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, Theodore Roosevelt in the 1902 coal strike, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first hundred days amid the 1933 Great Depression, and Lyndon B. Johnson during the 1964 Civil Rights Movement. The fascinating part is how Goodwin masterfully connects the upbringings of each president, their sense of ambition, their intense adversities and their method for crisis management. The patterns across the book are striking, from Lincoln’s melancholy and constant depression to Teddy’s struggles with debilitating asthma, to FDR’s ability to face poliomyelitis and keep his political life active, to LBJ's twenty-hour days and extraordinary skill to get things done. The four of them keeping ambition high while facing multiple failures. Each one offers lessons applicable to our own challenges. This book rewards reading at any stage of life.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know a good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.

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