Hi Reader,

There's a story about an ancient Greek philosopher, Protagoras, who would go the the agora and give a persuasive speech on a topic, virtue or the nature of the gods or something like that. His rhetoric was supposedly excellent, his arguments compelling. The next day, he'd return to the agora and make an equally impassioned argument against exactly the thing he'd argued for the previous day.

Of course this tactic was aimed at rhetorically supporting his central statement, "[humans are] the measure of all things." I'm not sure he would have argued against that one. Or, well, maybe that's exactly what he would have done.

Anyway, I'm going to do the same thing in today's newsletter. Two weeks ago I wrote about looking for proof. Last week I wrote about doing something hard, suggesting it would make your life easier.

Today, I say that both those newsletter were nothing more than meaningless rhetorical fluff. And I was taking them way too seriously.

In response to the newsletter on proof, I have this to say:

The closest I can get to proof that anything is real is by smashing it into my head. The more it hurts, the more likely it's real. But even that statement is built on a number of assumptions and presuppositions, and it still doesn't get me to an ironclad certainty that any particular thing is real. And it REALLY doesn't help me answer the question I set out to answer: "who am I?"

I had lunch with a friend today and he was musing on how his whole career has been built on mistakes. His specific example was how his technique of printing his photos on metal was created when he messed up a setting on his printer and liked the result.

I observed that the mistakes upon which his career is built long preceded him. It was that wise old sage Douglas Adams that gave us:

We wouldn't have any of these problems if we hadn't been born in the first place.

I'm not going to get proof. It's not out there. But it also isn't in me. My search for proof can easily turn into a distraction from living this moment for maximum enjoyment or appreciation or beauty or goodness or whatever it is I want to create out of life. Sometimes searching for proof is fun, in which case, great! But sometimes in my case it's closer to a habit, or even a compulsion. Something I lose myself in. If there's even a me to lose.

If it's all mistakes, all the way down, maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be.

In response to the newsletter on doing something hard, I have this to say:

I'm not convinced that a life full of ease is the same as an easy life. Similarly, I'm suspicious of the idea that a life full of hard things is a hard life. This newsletter confused things with life; they aren't the same.

Saying life is easy or hard is like saying the ocean is easy or hard. They're just not very applicable terms. I've had hard days, but life is just... life. Maybe my hard days have equipped me to handle harder days, making them seem easier. Maybe my easy days have allowed me to recharge and handle more down the line. I don't even know if I can say one way or the other. All I can do is sit with whatever is here, which includes the idea I call myself, and write some words, send them, hope they help you, and move on.