Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day, and at the end of the day—if you live long enough—like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.
Life and its various passages can be hard, brutally hard. The three things I have found helpful in coping with its challenges are:
Have low expectations
Have a sense of humor
Surround yourself with the love of friends and family.
Above all, live with change and adapt to it. If the world didn’t change, I’d still have a 12 handicap.
Charlie Munger
Author: Jack Fuzz
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The recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard, remind us that each hour of the night is crowded with events, and the primeval nature is still working and making tracks in the snow.
Henry D. ThoreauNature doesn’t pause. This is something we inherently know, but it takes a keen observer like Thoreau to call our attention to it.
Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. pp28
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Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step abroad to face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of their sparkle, and a dull leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid brazen light in the east proclaims the approach of day, while the western landscape is and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre Tartarrean light, like the shadowy realms.
– Henry D. ThoreauThat from Thoreau’s essay, a Winter Walk. The Tartarrean light refers to Tartarus, the lowest section of the underworld in Greek mythology.
Thoreau opens by opening his door and describing winter morning to us. Morning is a transition of light. Thoreau mentions light, in some form, three times in two sentences.
“Already the stars have lost some of their sparkle“
“A lurid brazen light in the east proclaims the approach of day“
“clothed in a sombre Tartarrean light“
Read A Winter Walk in full here.
Or pick up this helpful version Henry D. Thoreau Essays, full annotated edition from Yale press.
Thoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013. pp28
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I happen to like drawing. I draw all the time. Wasn’t it Degas who said, I’m just a man who likes to draw.’ That’s me, I’m just a man who likes to draw. I think an awful lot of people like to draw. I’m always meeting people who draw a bit crudely, and I point out that what’s needed is a bit of practice. You need things pointed out to you: how to see in a clearer way. You can teach the craft; the poetry, you can’t teach.
David HockneyThe poetry comes from what you can’t draw. The lines you can’t make. The lines you wobble with.
Certainly, do all you can to master the craft, but your style will emerge from those wobbles…
Gayford, Martin, and Hockney, David. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy. United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson, 2021. pp83
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Is getting out of your own head added time?
It’s true painting every day wouldn’t suit everybody, but it suits me. If you do that, you live in the now. Painters can live a long time. They either die young or make it to ripe old ages like Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, or my old friend Gillian Ayres. Do you know why? Because when you are painting, you’re so involved you can get out of yourself. Well, if you can do that, that’s added time. I am eighty-two and I feel fine. Maybe I walk slower.
– David HockneyHockney explains how when you age you notice more. I wonder if this applies to painters only. The narrative seems to be as you age, you notice less. You’re less alert. You care less. Maybe Hockney debunks those notions.
You notice more with each successive year; I am doing that now. I can go in and look at things more closely, such as a blossom. I took a branch and brought it in here to draw as a still life. It didn’t last long. I had to draw it in about four or five hours. It just rots when you bring it inside and lay it on a sheet of paper. It’s temporary, but most things are.
David HockneyGayford, Martin, and Hockney, David. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy. United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson, 2021. pp205,207
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He had been questioning authority for years. More than most men, he was born to do so.
Thomas E. Ricks on John AdamsJohn Adams was the complete opposite of the other first four presidents. In particular, he was not shy in expressing his feelings and ideas.
What a wonderful chapter title too: “John Adams aims to Become an American Cicero”
Ricks, Thomas E.. First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country. United States, HarperCollins, 2020. pp41
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‘All work made Jack.’ That witticism no doubt also contains a truth. Not much success is achieved without a lot of effort. But there is a catch. Csikszentmihalyi quotes a psychiatrist, an Austrian named Viktor Frankl: ‘Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.’ That is to say, if you do something that you are fitted for, that you love and are good at, success may (or may not) follow. But if you do that, you have succeeded in the most important respects anyway.
On one hand, effort is required success. Hockney’s own life proves that “All work made Jack”. But it’s possible the results of our effort is out of our control:
Clearly, when Hockney as a teenager in Bradford spent all day drawing, then all evening too, he could not have expected wealth and fame to be the result. In early 1950s Britain, very few artists were even able to make a living from their work alone. He tells several stories about his surprise when he first discovered that people were willing to pay money for his pictures. He defined his own notion of a life lived without regrets to Kristy Lang, who interviewed him for The Times in the spring of 2020: ‘I can honestly say that, for the last 60 years, every day I’ve done what I want to do. Not many people can that. I’ve been a professional artist. I didn’t even teach much, just painted and drew every single day.
Spring Cannot Be Cancelled is a philosophy book wearing an art book mask.
Gayford, Martin, and Hockney, David. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy. United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson, 2021. pp204
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If you want to be the best tennis player in the world, you may start out trying and soon find out that it’s hopeless—that other people blow right by you. However, if you want to become the best plumbing contractor in Bemidji, that is probably doable by two-thirds of you. It takes a will. It takes the intelligence. But after a while, you’d gradually know all about the plumbing business in Bemidji and master the art. That is an attainable objective, given enough discipline. And people who could never win a chess tournament or stand in center court in a respectable tennis tournament can rise quite high in life by slowly developing a circle of competence, which results partly from what they were born with and partly from what they slowly develop through work.
Charlie MungerIf this is true, then developing one’s circle of competence is one of the most urgent things a person can do. But it does raise the question, how do I know if I’m being ambitious enough?
If you only explore and develop your circle of competence how does one know when they’re hitting their limits?
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“Drawing is about two fundamental things,” I explained, my hand stabilizers compensating for the motion of the horse. “Use of shapes and use of shadows.” I did a quick sketch of her head, using broad, firm pencil strokes for the parts of the face. Some shading, a little more work on the eyes, and it started to pop. I’d always been good at faces; just don’t ask me do do hands.
”I’ve seen art before,” she said, curious. “But how do you make it seem so real?” “one of the tricks is something we call perspective,” I explained. “Some things are farther away, right? And some things closer? That goes for parts of a person too. On a face, some parts are close to you, other parts are farther away. The trick is to make it seem that way in a drawing.
”You can’t draw it like it’s flat. If I use shadows–and put the eyes on a curved line like this–and use just a touch of foreshortening. . .”
There’s a moment in drawing, at least for me, when a face transforms from shapes and lines into a person. The eyes were a big part, and the dots of light reflecting in them, but the lips were important too.
Was not expecting a flurry of drawing craft notes as we drive towards the conclusion of act three, but Brandon Sanderson…
Sanderson, Brandon. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England. United States, Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC. pp284,285
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From his grandfather, basic principles anyone can apply:
he never forgot the sound principles taught by his grandfather: to concentrate on the task immediately in front of him and to control spending.
On choosing clients and deterring greed:
‘To this day, Charlie continues to influence the firm’s attorneys, reminding them, “You don’t need to take the last dollar” and “Choose clients as you would friends.”
Yes, Adam Smith is still relevant. How is that even a question?
I think you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend.
Charlie MungerEvery page of this book has a takeaway. Could be the best thirty dollars you invest.
Munger, Charles T.. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. N.p., Stripe Matter Incorporated. (Digital Edition)
Floodlights and Goalposts 