be perfect in order to make them better, was the general idea. There might not be such a thing as a perfect square in the whole of nature, but it helps an architect or town planner to know the ideal version of a square so they can take it from the abstract realm and try their best to replicate it. It helps to know what the perfect form of friendship or education or justice might look like, too, so friends and teachers and judges can replicate it.
All great stuff, and I am not about to start a fight with Plato, as he was a wrestler as well as a philosopher apparently, but the problems start when we are told we can reach perfection with the right bank account or app or personal trainer. And then we remain imperfect, as all things are, and we might feel even worse for having believed this perfect Platonic world exists.
Another reason I don’t have to fight with Plato is because Aristotle already did. Aristotle, himself a one-time student of Plato’s, had a looser, more earth-bound approach to life. He believed that we shouldn’t focus on an abstract world of essential forms because this world right here—this one we live on—contains those essential forms. For Plato a tree was always a poor imitation of an ideal tree, whereas for Aristotle a tree always contains its essential tree-ness in its very substance.
The trouble with perfect abstract ideals that we want to reach is that we never get there. They are untouchable rainbows. Far better, I reckon, to find a comfort in the world itself. To try and see trees as essential versions of trees, and ourselves as essential versions of ourselves, and to cultivate the essential spirit of rather than to reach for something that doesn’t and can’t exist and watch it forever slip through our fingers.
Work with what you have. Exist in this world. Be the asymmetric square. Be the wonky tree. Be the real you.
You are more than your worst behavior
If you tell a child they are useless, they’ll begin to believe they are useless. If you tell yourself you are useless, the same thing happens. The depressed person who believes that people hate them is more likely to act in ways that fulfill that expectation. And if we believe people must fall into the crudely divided binaries of “good” and “bad,” we can easily risk judging ourselves forever because of one mistake.
We need kindness. We need a way to see the difference between who people are and what they sometimes do. And that includes us.
Warm
Don’t worry about being cool. Never worry what the cool people think. Life is warmth. You’ll be cool when you’re dead. Head for the warm people. Head for life.
Dream
Our very existence is a remarkable testimony to human survival. When we think of the likelihood that, after 150,000 generations, we would end up here, alive, right now, as us, we are contemplating an improbability so vast it is almost an impossibility. Think of all the terrible and unlikely stories of survival, and of each relative above us in the chain of existence having to stay alive and meet a mate. It is the contemplation of absurd odds. We are all inside a dream that is real. We are the fires conjured from nothing. We exist out of near impossibility. And yet we exist.
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up.
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up.
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up.
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up.
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up.
Nothing is stronger than a—
Clarity
You are here. And that is enough.
The importance of weird thinking
It is good to be weird. It is good to be eccentric. It is good to be separate from the crowd. The philosopher John Stuart Mill thought it was almost a civic duty to be eccentric, to break the tyranny of conformity and custom. But even if we don’t feel outwardly eccentric, we all have eccentric parts. Thoughts that crop up on the peripheries of our thinking. Random sparks we can set alight. Thoughts that offer the other point of view or the other side of a political argument. Thoughts that don’t quite fit in with our other thoughts. Tastes that go against our other tastes. And as we grow older it is good to keep tending to those unconventional parts of ourselves—the thoughts