01: An Interesting Life, 90’s Nostalgia, The Limits of Self-Improvement

In today’s newsletter…

• How to live a more interesting life
• Feeling nostalgic for the 90’s
• The limits of self-improvement
• A few links I enjoyed from around the web

How to live a more interesting life

“To be interesting, be interested.” 

Kevin Kelly

I had a professor in college who taught American history like you wouldn’t believe. He was a small man and very polite and rather quiet if you met him outside the classroom. But when he taught, he would transform before your eyes. He would literally bounce up and down, shout, bang his fists on the lectern, and break into a sweat. This was no show. He loved history that much.

When you meet someone like that, someone obsessed by a topic, it’s hard not to feel a little jealous. At least that’s how I feel. Imagine the pleasure he must get talking and thinking about the subject and the sense of purpose he must derive from his job. He probably sees it as a mission. All of us students thought this professor was the most interesting guy.

Anyway, this got me thinking…. is interest something you have control over? Is it possible to become interested in something that you currently have no interest in?

🏎️ For nearly my whole life I had absolutely zero interest in NASCAR (it’s safe to keep reading even if you have no interest in cars or racing… I do have a larger point). Then one Sunday afternoon I was laying on the couch, turned on the tv and NASCAR was on. I was about to flip the channel like I normally would when I heard something that caught my attention. I heard the announcer describing a scene that had just unfolded: one of the drivers was driving along in circles at 180mph when all of a sudden the back end of the car slid out and they went careening into the wall… no other car had touched them. What the announcer said next, somehow, inexplicably, tickled my fancy and turned me into a NASCAR fan.

He said something to the effect of… well, that’s just what happens when you’re driving for hours on end at the very edge of control. Oddly enough, I felt something strangely aesthetically pleasing about the idea of 40 racers driving in circles as fast as they could… and the winner is the one who can bring their car as close to that fine line of grip that physics will allow and hold it there the longest (and if you cross the line, disaster ensues).

Over the next 5 years, the more I’ve learned about NASCAR the more I grow to enjoy it:

• the history
• the personalities of the drivers
• the strategy
• the physics of grip and aerodynamics

This personal transformation into a NASCAR fan is what convinced me I could learn to find any topic interesting if I had an open mind and took the time to learn all the little details that gives the topic texture. All it takes to get started is finding that one little hook that grabs your attention and allowing it to pull you in.

So, are you ready for the secret to living a more interesting life? It’s easy… keep your eyes wide open for anything that grabs your attention, makes you curious, or moves you in any way:

• a single line from a book or article (maybe just the title)
• a song lyric
• a particular picture, image, or setting
• a smell or feeling
• a thought in the shower
• a particular aspect of someone’s personality, lifestyle, appearance, or experiences

Once you get the first taste, don’t stop there. Find out more… as much as you can. Keep asking questions and seeking out answers.

If you live this way, you can pretty much say good bye to boredom. Once you realize how many interesting things and people surround you, your life will feel rich with wonder.

Feeling nostalgic for the 90’s

I tend to get nostalgic feelings fairly often. Usually it’s for the 1990’s (peak childhood) or sometimes for highschool or college (my coming of age) and sometimes for time periods that I never even lived in (weird.. too much reading). I also like to imagine what things in my current life I’ll be nostalgic for in 20 or 30 years…

❓ So, what’s the use of nostalgia anyways?

For as long as I can remember thinking about such things, I have felt that nostalgia was something important. Not just a fun emotion for people who idealize the past, but a part of the human experience that was meant to point beyond itself. Some of my strongest emotional experiences in life have been tied to nostalgia, which is kind of weird to admit.

About 10 years ago I was walking to my car, about to head to work when I had what is to this day one of the most unexpected and vivid experience of my life. I remember it was a warm day, early fall, with a light breeze. The breeze carried a few leaves into my path and I was hit by what can only be described as an intense nostalgia for every autumn I’ve ever experienced. 🍂 The emotion was so strong, I’m willing to admit that a small tear came to my eye.

Around the same time I remember re-reading the book “Surprised by Joy” by C.S. Lewis. Lewis starts the book by describing 3 intensely nostalgic experiences from his childhood. He describes the experiences as something like “an unsatisfied desire, which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” He said that the experiences were a particular kind of unhappiness or grief, but the kind you wanted to feel. He even doubted that anyone who ever had the experience would trade it for all the pleasures in the world.

Lewis opened my eyes to the idea that nostalgia is really a longing to be reunited with some source of beauty and goodness that we feel cut-off from. When we see or experience beauty, we don’t just want to see it, we want to get inside of it. Famously, as the book describes, Lewis’ lifelong pursuit of “joy” and his attempts to drink from the source eventually led him to God.

“Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”

C.S. Lewis

The limits of self-improvement

It seems hard to argue with self-improvement by definition. To improve is to get better and to improve yourself feels like as good a place to start as any. There’s certainly no honor in getting worse and setting out to improve your spouse or a friend would be a fool’s errand. Something about taking the plank out of your own eye first…

On one level, I do think of a blog like This Evergreen Home as a self-improvement blog. The goal of me writing is to document some of what I’m learning about life, and the goal of any reader is to be entertained and maybe pick up a useful idea along the way.

All my life I’ve been drawn to the idea of improving myself along any number of dimensions. But lately, I’ve been giving more thought to the possible downsides of a self-improvement mindset:

• Becoming more interested in myself and my own concerns than in other people
• An unhealthy level of introspection
• Beginning to measure my self-worth primarily by progress (or setbacks) towards goals
• Certain people or tasks begin to feel like obstacles
• Losing the ability to relax and enjoy the parts of life that are done for their own sake

❓ How do I enjoy the benefits of self-improvement (that also spill over to those around me) without taking it too far and sliding into some of the shadow sides mentioned above?

I don’t have a definitive answer on how to find that balance. Likely each one of those temptations will need to be addressed with a different set of tools. I think it helps to think of life as a gift to be enjoyed rather than a game to be optimized. I think it also helps to remember how the story of your life ends (with you dying) and allowing that to carry some weight on how you value different goals. But ultimately, I think the most practical takeaway might be to remember that even self-improvement has its limits– it will not hold up to the weight of giving your life it’s ultimate meaning or purpose.

A few links I enjoyed from around the web:

🏰 An abandoned town of castles

“From afar, the gray-roofed neighborhood looks like something out of a Disney movie—perhaps Beauty and the Beast—but, upon closer inspection, Burj Al Babas boasts an eerie post-apocalyptic feel with rows of partially completed castles, patchy landscaping, and zero signs of life.”

📀 Netflix still has more than two million DVD subscribers

“Coronavirus has proven both a blessing and a curse from that perspective – people have a lot more time, and they’re realising that the streaming library doesn’t quite have the depth they’d like, so some are turning back to old media.”

🤔 Do you like the person you are becoming?

I responded to her question, “I’m excited about the work I’m doing. But I don’t think I always like the person I am becoming. In fact, if I’m being honest, I think I’m a little less patient than I was ten years ago. I think I’m a little more prideful—maybe even less kind. I also sometimes wonder if I was a little more fun to be around a decade ago.”

🎳 The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever

“In a bowling alley one night, Bill Fong came so close to perfection that it nearly killed him… Bill Fong needs no reminders, of course. He thinks about that moment—those hours—every single day of his life.”