Regular Reveries 32: 2021, Build Aspirins for Friends, Self-Reliance, and Thoreau
It looks like we don't have anything good in store for 2021. A week hadn't passed, and the US already had a coup attempt.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin is at an all-time high, so I hope you've managed to hold it through the big spike. I've sold mine just before it.
This week's article
I wrote an article about "scratching your own itch" this week. Instead of doing that, maybe building aspirins for friends is a better alternative.
Content candy
I've read "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson recently. It's a free book since it's in the public domain. Here are two highlights from the book that resonated the most with me.
Happiness and peace come from within, not from something external.
"A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."
We usually give more weight to the thoughts of others than to our own.
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this."
Something to think about
"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."
Henry David Thoreau
Question for you
What's the best fiction book you have ever read?