Blazing Reader:
Each day at lunch, my son and I have been listening to the audiobook version of Jordan Peterson's Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life AND the Spanish version, Más allá del orden: 12 nuevas reglas para vivir.
No, we don't listen to them simultaneously. Five minutes in English, five minutes in español. We're aiming to become bilingual in case one day we need to escape Chinada for Latin America.
Anyway, the following paragraph, from the chapter entitled "Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens," made me feel pretty darn enthusiastic about life:
“Those who do not choose a direction are lost. It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing. This is despite all the genuine limitations and disappointments that becoming something entails. Everywhere, the cynic despairs, are bad decisions. But someone who has transcended that cynicism (or more accurately, replaced it with an even more profound doubt—that is, the doubt that doubt itself is an ultimately reliable guide) objects: the worst decision of all is none.”
This reminds me of my decision to write a novel to combat the COVID propaganda. I could have continued writing non-fiction articles. I could have ran for office. I could have started an underground, black market hair-cutting salon. But I decided, instead, to spend two years writing one novel and see what happens. It came out better than I expected. I exceeded my expectations. And, what's more, plenty of people have raved about it.
If most people did just one thing really well to make their life and the world better, we'd probably all be a lot less stressed and lot more happy. Because, as Peterson says, "It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing."
Stay sane and read good books,
PS You can find out more about Peterson's book Beyond Order on his website.
PPS Whether one writes a big book, raises conscientious kids, runs a healthy and affordable burrito stand or becomes the quickest bookkeeper in the county... focus, commitment and wild abandon have made civilization great, and will continue to do so. That was the thesis behind my essay, The ONE Thing You Can Do To Stop The Nutty New Normal that I published back in 2021.
John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/
