The garden

Happy Sunday,

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I made a pledge to keep my notes & thoughts short this week.

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Primarily because my last few posts have been longer essays and creative brevity is something I’m actively working towards. There’s a notorious quote in the annals of writing (unclear who actually said it first):

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have time”

Brevity is creative. Brevity is discerning. Brevity carries weight. Brevity can say things, convey things, and create things, that loquaciousness cannot. Brevity is a desirable arrow in the professional and creative quiver.

Circumstantially, aiding and embedding my goal of brevity, last week I picked up Spain’s flavor of Covid while in Mallorca (wonderful place!) and have since guzzled enough alternating swigs of DayQuil and NyQuil to likely sedate a large bear.

So for both creative and health reasons, my notes today are short.

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In my couch-ridden weekend riding the DayQuil wave, I’ve consumed a smorgasbord of great content. The economy is showing signs of cautiously optimistic resilience, Netflix’s Quarterback series was excellent (Peyton Manning has the Midas touch), and I loved this thoughtful piece on self-delusion in our lives, and the consideration that, sometimes, self-delusion can be a positive.

But the best thing I read this weekend (there are still 6 hours to go, mind you) was a simple David Bowie quote on aging (brevity FTW!):

“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been”

When I read this quote, my mind feels as if I’ve just taken those wonderful first few sips of cold champagne, a telltale signal that I could easily pump out a few thousand words exploring it.

Instead, in faithfulness to brevity, I leave below a few rough, uncut, shorthand notes that capture my considerations of Bowie’s quote in preparation for another week ahead.

I hope the quote positively contributes to your Sunday headspace as it does mine.

Have a great week.

My notes/questions in response to David Bowie’s quote:

“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been”

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Aging does seem to be an extraordinary process in the sense of biological certainty – it is extraordinary in its unrelenting win rate. It is undefeated, it has never lost. Aging makes Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Roger Federer look streaky and average by comparison.
Who does best with aging in our society, and what is their relationship to this idea of the person they “always should have been”?
If we know the person we “always should have been”, does that make the aging process easier/more fun/more graceful/more financially successful?
If we don’t know, or resist journeying toward, the person we “always should have been”, does that make aging harder?
“the person you always should have been”: this suggests a fixed/finite unchanging nature to ourselves, a singular person we are each ourselves circling the drain toward becoming, or reverting back to. Does this rob us, even if slightly, of our own agency? It seems to.
- if there is not a single person we “always should have been”, what is our relationship to the person, or people, we become as we age?
Implied in the quote is that there’s a gap between who we are now (today) and who we will become (future). Is there a correlation between life satisfaction and the size of the gap? If so, is it inverse? (Smaller the gap b/t who you are and who you become = higher life satisfaction?)
how does one know when they’re moving closer to, or further away from, the person they always should have been? What are the signals and signs?
A false choice, but a fun one to consider: Is life fundamentally a regression toward our own personal mean and learning to accept that (“a leopard cannot change its spots”) or a continuous, increment elevation to a new personal mean?