Summary of today’s issue
🔑 #1 - Living in discomfort
🔑 #2 - The power you have
Last summer I spent 18 days river rafting through the Grand Canyon. It’s an incredible experience, special in a way that is impossible to put in words or pictures.
The day-to-day is simple (but not easy): you make food, pack your boat, decide how to run the rapids, and where to sleep. That’s it.
Now I’m reading a book called The Emerald Mile which makes me think back to that trip.
It’s about a thrilling adventure of friends who set the record for running the grand canyon stretch of the Colorado River (just 23 hours, for what took us 18 days). It’s also a story of land preservation, philosophy, and friendship.
Below is a passage I pulled from the book about the big badest rapid called Crystal Rapid.
At the time there was no way to get through safely. Boats were flipped, destroyed…etc. But eventually, an oarsman identified a middle path, that if you landed your boat perfectly skirted you just past all the danger and brought you to the end of the run in one piece.
Here is the description of the run:
In some ways, the run offered a hydraulic affirmation of that wiggy paradox to which Zen masters refer when they talk about journey and destinations: the notion that only by steering himself unflichingly into those places he most feverently wished to avoid - in this case, one of the vilest patches of white water in the entier canyon - could a man hope to arrive at the place he truly needed to be.
We talk a lot about comfort in our day-to-day. People are naturally avoidant of discomfort, and constantly seek the path to comfort.
We live a hard life to give our kids a ‘better’ life.
But is a life of comfort truly a better life?
I believe that we should give our kids a chance to live in discomfort.
This means encouraging them to make decisions that may be confusing, a little risky, or downright stupid. Why?
Recovery from stress & pain - in Nassim Taleb’s book “Antifragile”, you learn the strongest structures in the world aren’t the most rigid ones.
For example, a suspension bridge will shake and rotate during an earthquake because engineers have learned that it’s a more durable structure than a solid bridge which would crack under pressure.
The reality of life is if you live long enough, you’re likely to experience mental, and emotional pain and struggle. Close family members may become disabled or die, you may lose your job, your house…etc.
Living in discomfort and uncertainty prepares you for future discomfort and uncertainty.
Rate of learning - you learn the least in stasis. You learn the most in motion, while on the edge of discomfort. The world is constantly changing and adapting. Nothing stays still. Your ability to adapt and learn the world will keep you ahead of the change.
Knowing this, if you’re given the choice do you prepare your kids for a comfortable life or an antifragile one? If so, how?
This next passage is also from the Emerald Mile.
Historians often minimize or discount the impact that any one individual can have on human destiny - and for good reason…But even the most jaded observer can concede that, every now and then, a man or woman steps up to the plate and takes a mighty swing that clears the bases and fundamentally changes the game.
Here’s another quote that I love which is saying something similar.
I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of commitees ~ Gilbert Chesterton
You don’t need to live a life of glory that will be commemorated in the history books. That life is not for most people.
But think about the impact you can have on your community and the people around you.
You can be the person these quotes talk about on a local level.
You can be the person that changes the course of your family’s lineage.
You can make your parents happier with simple gestures.
You can create more love in the lives of your friends.
You can be the person that organizes changes in your neighborhood. You can be the person who changes local politics.
If we all agree to take 2% more ownership of ourselves and our lives, can you imagine the world we will live in?
Moses Kagan says any person can decide to be the founder of their family’s financial future (tweet). It only takes 1 extremely determined person to change the course of your heir’s lives forever.
Have a great week,
Sieva
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