Category Interpersonal

On Confidence (3/3)

“Confidence is not the belief that we won’t meet obstacles. It is the recognition that difficulties are an inescapable part of all worthwhile contributions. We must ensure we have plenty of narratives to hand that normalise the role of pain, anxiety and disappointment in even the best and most successful lives.”

The School of Life, Confidence – The Battle Against Timidity

On Confidence (2/3)

“The topic of confidence is too often neglected by serious people: we spend so much time acquiring technical skills, and so little time practicing the one virtue that will make those skills effective in the world.”

The School of Life, Confidence – The Battle Against Timidity

On Confidence (1/3)

“One of the greatest sources of despair is the belief that things should have been easier than they have turned out to be. We give up not simply because events are difficult, but because we hadn’t expected them to be so. The capacity to remain confident is, to a significant extent, a matter of internalizing a correct narrative about what difficulties it is normal to encounter.

The School of Life, Confidence – The Battle Against Timidity

Wallace

“He learned his lesson in third year, when, after he had passed his preliminary exams, Simone pulled him into her office to debrief. She sat behind her desk with her legs crossed, a beautiful winter day lying white and smooth behind her, all the way to the lake, that blue-white churn and the trees like delicate woodwork in a diorama. He felt good about himself. He felt, for the first time since coming to grad school, like he was finally doing what she always urged him to do — catching up — and he imagined that he saw pride in her eyes. He was excited. he was ready to begin in earnest — to really begin. And she asked, How do you think that went? And he said Oh, well, I thought it was okay. And she shook her head grimly. She said, You know, Wallace, that was … frankly, I was embarrassed for you. Had that been another student, it might have gone differently. You might not have passed. But we talked a long time about what was feasible for you, what was reasonable for your abilities, and we decided we’d pass you, but we are going to watch you, Wallace. No more of this. You need to get better. She spoke as though she was bestowing blessings. Bestowing beneficence. Bestowing irrefutable grace. She spoke as though she was saving him. What could he say? What could he do?”

Nothing. Except to work.

Real Life, by Brandon Taylor

2019-20

“It is we in particular, those remorselessly skilled at not giving up, who need to hear a curious-sounding lesson in being a little less loyal. We need to hear that, surprisingly, some people just don’t change: that their characters have been bolted shut through trauma and there is no chance that they will ever – whatever they may say and however intensely they promise – display any evolution. We need to hear that surprisingly, some people aren’t entirely good and we aren’t necessarily the problem. We need to learn to blame and get annoyed with someone other than ourselves. We need to do something very strange: walk away. This is no sign of cowardice or weakness of character. It’s a sign that we have (finally) learnt to love ourselves and so place our needs where these should always have been: at the center of our considerations.”

The School of Life, The Capacity to Give up on People

Atman Binstock

“After all, if the technology was really ready, surely people more capable than me would figure it out. But Michael (Abrash) convinced me that this was basically the myth of technological inevitability: the idea that because technologies were possible, they would just naturally happen. Instead, the way technological revolutions actually happen involves smart people working very hard on the right problems at the right time. And if I wanted a revolution, and I thought I was capable of contributing, I should be actively pushing it forward.”

Magnus Carlsen

“There wasn’t any particular player I modeled my game after. I tried to learn from everyone and create my own style. I studied past players. Truth be told I never had a favorite player. It’s just not my nature to go around idolizing people. I just go try to learn.”

Gerhard Richter

Quite early on, you were described as “inconsistent’, because you were always swapping levels, both in your subject matter and, even more, in your style. You have described yourself as ‘uncertain’. Or is some of it about proving to yourself and to others that you can do anything?

No, it isn’t that. Painting a copy of a photograph is something that can be learned. And there are so many conceivable kinds of artistic statement that I haven’t made – I’m relatively limited – a bit one-sided, in fact. Never anything but oil painting.

Inconsistency is simply a consequence of uncertainty, which I certainly do tend to suffer from – but then I also regard it as inevitable and necessary.

So perhaps uncertainty is the overriding theme?

Maybe. At all events, uncertainty is part of me; it’s a basic premise of my work. After all, we have no objective justification for feeling certain about anything. Certainty is for fools, or liars.

“Lord Dorwin”

“I took the liberty of recording all his statements.”

There was a flurry, and Pierenne opened his mouth in horror.

“What of it?” demanded Hardin. “I realize it was a gross breach of hospitality and a thing no so-called gentleman would do. Also, that if his Lordship had caught on, things might have been unpleasant; but he didn’t, and I have the record, and that’s that. I took that record, had it copied out and sent that to Holk for analysis, also.”

Lundin Crast said, “And where is the analysis?”

“That,” replied Hardin, “is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications – in short, all the goo and dribble – he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out.

“Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire.”

The Fellowship of Suffering

An excerpt from an article by Vivian Gornick.

Natalia Ginzburg came from a dysfunctional family and very young she learned that self-protection required the cultivation of an inner distance from others. Eventually it took a heavy toll. In adolescence, she developed a “stony-faced” (her word) hauteur that made her feel unreal to herself, and soon enough it made everyone around here seem unreal as well. In time she became sealed into an emotional anomie that hardened with the years.

In 1938, at the age of 21, Natalia married Leone Ginzburg, an anti-fascist, and, in 1941, when he was declared persona non grata by the government, accompanied him into what was then called “internal exile” – removal to some rural area from from the urban centers. In 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, the family (by then they had three children) decided it was safe to move back to Rome – a miscalculation for which they would pay dearly. Leone went first, and five months later Natalia and the children followed. Within 20 days of the family’s arrival in the city, Leone was arrested by German police and taken off to prison, where he was tortured and killed.

Ginzburg’s armor – her haughty anomie – had been in place all this time. But now, with war on the ground – the loss of her young husband, death raining from the sky, countless children abandoned in the rubble – life shocked her into an experience she could never have imagined. Suddenly, she felt stifled inside the separateness from others she had valued all these years. No longer a protection, this deep withdrawal of hers now seemed dangerous: a threat to her own survival. Somehow, she realized, she must begin to feel connected, or at least to act as though she felt connected. She must teach herself – now! – to mimic the look and feel of unthinking, everyday, comradeship.

Ah, she has it: “We learn,” she writes with something like wonder in her voice, “to ask for help from the first passer-by.” And then, “we learn to give help to the first passer-by.” And then, at last, she finds herself – and that’s exactly it: finds herself – feeling not only saved but curiously alive through the simple act of taking part in the fellowship of suffering.

The experience led Ginzburg to the insight that dominated her work for the rest of her life. In “that brief moment when one day it fell to our lot to live when we had looked at the things of the world for the last time,” she had “found a point of equilibrium for our wavering life.” From then on, she writes, “we could look at our neighbor with a gaze that would always be just and free, not the timid or contemptuous gaze of someone who whenever he is with his neighbor always asks himself if he is his master or his servant.”

I don’t for a minute believe that this seemingly epiphanic moment brought about a permanent change in Ginzburg’s behavior. But when the war was over and the fellowship of suffering had loosened its hold on her, she remained grateful to both, not because they had destroyed her original sense of aloofness but because they had taught her that it had been in place for so much of her life. She now understood that all these years she had been a stranger to herself.