Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.
This month we’re exploring the theme of the self.
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
🍰 Mini Bites of the Week
🍰 Story:
“Is the old man around?” a White House operator would hear around 6 pm. And they knew what to do with the call.
Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan had a relationship seldom seen in politics these days.
They were partisan rivals, O’Neill the Democratic Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and Reagan the Republican President occupying the White House.
The two disagreed on most issues and fought each other hard—tax cuts for corporations, social spending, defense budgets.
But the two had a deal with each other—no matter how hard the job got, no matter how much they wanted to kill the other, at 6 pm, they’d set aside their differences and be cordial.
“Before 6 p.m., it’s all politics. After 6 p.m., we’re friends,” O’Neill would say.
And the two were committed to it. They’d drink, swap stories, and talk like old pals.
O’Neill and Reagan had more than a rivalry, underneath their beliefs and partisan armor was admiration for each other built on this friendship.
It’s something we don’t see often anymore, this ability to disagree and remain connected to one another. We have come to conflate our identities with our roles—our titles, political beliefs, the public image we’ve attempted to craft.
But what we forget is these are all the costumes we put on for the world to see.
Underneath is our individual selves made up of personality, memories, fears, doubts—all preexisting these roles.
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus reminded his students that each of us is an actor in a role in the play of life and it is up to us to choose how well we want to play it.
Our troubles don’t stem from the roles we play but our inability to remember we’re more than the role we play.
“I am large, I contain multitudes,” Walt Whitman once wrote.
Everyone contains multitudes.
Reagan did.
And O’Neill.
As do we.
Reagan and O’Neill had the relationship they did because they understood where the role ended and the person began.
We each have the ability for a 6 pm call. It’s about whether or not we choose to make it.
🍰 4 Quotes on the self, masks, and metacognition
Søren Kierkegaard on losing oneself
“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.”
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Matthew Crawford on metacognition
“[Metacognition] is what you do when you stop for a moment in your pursuit of a solution, and wonder whether your understanding of the problem is adequate.”
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Eric Weiner on distractions
“Mental noise does more than disturb. It masks. In a noisy environment, we lose the signal, and our way.”
—
James Baldwin on facing the hard things
“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
🍰 3 Reflections from me:
I. Until we look in, we can’t expect to understand what’s out.
II. ‘Who I am’ and ‘who I want to become’ are two sides of the same coin. We must learn that one leads to the other.
III. We’re more inclined to living in blissful ignorance with a mask than see our own true reflection. To see our true selves, we have to spend the time and energy to peel back the layers.
🧠 This Week in Mind Candy 📚
🧘🏻 Monday Meditation:
🦉 Wednesday Wisdom:
👀 This Week’s Recommendations
📰 Article Worthy of a Read: How ‘feelings about thinking’ help us navigate our world by Pablo Fernandez Velasco & Slawa Loev
🔑 Key Takeaway: “Metacognitive feelings tend to be mild and sometimes run in the background, so that one has to reflect on them to fully notice them. But they are feelings nonetheless, just like anger or sadness. They have valence (the feeling of knowing feels good, the feeling of forgetting feels bad); they vary in their level of arousal (think of the exciting ‘aha’ moments of insight, versus a mild feeling of familiarity); and they are embodied and guided by visceral information (eg, an increase in heart rate), like other feelings are.”
📖 Book on Weekly Theme: The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
🔑 Key Takeaway: “Being able to understand more clearly that stranger within us would help us to realize that it is not a stranger at all but very much a part of ourselves, and that we are far more mysterious, complex, and interesting than we had imagined.”
🎧 Podcast Recommendation: The below episodes dives into Robert Greene’s Laws of Human Nature and the masks we wear.
🔑 Key Takeaway: “Everything people do is a sign… It means something. They’re telling you something about themselves, indirectly.”
🎥 Video to Watch: Dr. Gabor Mate discusses the self, trauma, and healing from ourselves.
🔑 Key Takeaway: “The fundamental problem… you lost the connection to yourself. So there’s the external event and the impact… What are we looking for then? That reconnection with ourselves. Loss of ourselves is an adaptation. Why is it an adaptation? Because if it is so painful to be myself I better disconnect.”
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Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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