Category: Philosophy

Infinity and Eternity Cover

Infinity and Eternity

Nik

Infinity asked his sister Eternity: “Do you ever get bored?” “All the time,” Eternity said. “How about you?”

“Never,” Infinity replied. “How could I? There’s so much to do! So much to see, feel, and experience! I want to climb Mount Everest. I want to be a drummer. I want to live in a monastery. Don’t you want to try them all?“

“I did,” Eternity said, “and I can tell you that, after a while, they’re all the same. There is nothing new under the sun.”

“What? How can you say that?!” Infinity looked incredulous. “Flying a plane, surfing a wave, kissing the love of your life, how could these possibly be the same?”

“Oneness lies not in what you do, little brother. It lies in who you are underneath, and whether you can bring them to any occasion. When you live every day from the shining light that is your true self, how you spend your time no longer matters.”

Infinity had never heard his sister talk like this before. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. What are you even saying? Who is this ‘them’ you are talking about? And what does it mean to ‘live from the shining light?’ Why have you not told me about any of this until now?”

“You know, Infinity, I’ve waited a long time,” Eternity said. “In fact, I’ve spent endless lifetimes waiting. I just figured today is as good a day as any to see if you are ready.”

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28 Lessons From 5 Years of Meditating Every Day Cover

28 Lessons From 5 Years of Meditating Every Day

Nik

I started meditating on August 29, 2019. I haven’t missed a day since. That’s over five years — almost 2,000 days — of sitting with my eyes closed for at least five minutes, usually 15, without fail.

I originally started meditating for two reasons. First, I felt called out when I heard Naval Ravikant say in an interview that meditation is “one of those things that everybody says they do, but nobody actually does.” I was already a mindful, self-aware person — but noticing is not the same as processing. Instead of just realizing that I was, say, biting my nails, I wanted to feel calm and present enough to actively stop, too.

Second, in that same interview, Naval actually provided a doable way to meditate. “It is literally the art of doing nothing,” he said. “All you need to do for meditation is to sit down, close your eyes, comfortable position, whatever happens happens. If you think, you think. If you don’t think, you don’t think. Don’t put effort into it, don’t put effort against it.” Freed from all the gurus, gadgets, and distractions of what has since become a $5 billion industry, I could finally start meditating right then and there, without complications or expectations. So I did.

After my first, intense week of meditating for an hour each day, I wrote down some initial lessons. Then, as my habit became smaller but stayed consistent, I reflected some more on day 800. Since then, I’ve shared the occasional, individual insight on my daily blog.

For my five-year anniversary, I figured why not round up all lessons, organize them, and present them in a way that makes sense? So that’s exactly what I’ve done. This way, you can get a comprehensive overview in one post but also dive deeper into any particular idea that interests you.

Here are 28 lessons from five years of meditating every day.

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10 Lessons From 10 Years of Writing Cover

10 Lessons From 10 Years of Writing

Nik

Today is the ten-year-anniversary of my first blog post. Back then, I didn’t know the first thing about headlines, title case, or narrative structure. I had no clue I was going to be a writer, let alone that I would get to do it full-time. And I definitely didn’t imagine landing here, a decade later, fully intending to write not just for another ten years but for the rest of my life.

Still, somehow, I’ve managed to publish over 2,000 pieces of writing since that first post. I rarely feel all the wiser, but I’ve undoubtedly learned a thing or two along the way. To mark the occasion, I’d like to share ten of the more palpable lessons from my journey: one particular theme that emerged during each of the years that I’ve been writing.

Here are ten lessons from ten years of wordsmithing.

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Balance Is a Verb, Not a Noun Cover

Balance Is a Verb, Not a Noun

Nik

“All I want is work-life balance.”

How often have you had this thought?

In theory, it makes sense: We strive to spend our lives well. That means directing the right amounts of time, effort, and attention to life’s many domains, from the necessities to taking care of ourselves to what’s most important to us.

Therefore, if we could allocate our limited resources perfectly, we’d achieve the ultimate equilibrium — and with it calm and happiness, right?

I don’t think so. In fact, I believe work-life balance doesn’t exist — and I can prove it to you with a single question:

What does perfect work-life balance look like, in detail, in your very life?

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This Virtual Soldier's Speech Explains How to Have True Purpose in Life Cover

This Virtual Soldier’s Speech Explains How to Have True Purpose in Life

Nik

Humans are agents of change.

From the moment we are conceived, our body begins to evolve. It grows until we’re born, and then it grows some more. Our bones, cells, muscles, even our brains — they constantly renew themselves. Day after day, month after month, year after year. It all changes until it can’t change anymore.

In time, we start to decay. Decay, too, is change. It’s not a bad thing, you know? As Steve Jobs said, “Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

We don’t change just on the inside. Between birth and death, we change everything we interact with. We change nature, culture, and others. Throwing a rock is change. Discussing remote work is change. Patting a friend on the back is change. Even sleeping is change.

Change is the most human thing we do — and the most powerful way to enact change is through purpose.

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My 12 Favorite Nonfiction Books Most People Have Never Heard Of Cover

My 12 Favorite Nonfiction Books Most People Have Never Heard Of

Nik

Imagine a city with one million inhabitants. It has everything you would expect from a city of that size: some skyscrapers, a decent transport system, and all the usual public and social infrastructure.

There is, however, a catch: Everyone in this city can only read the same 10 books. It’s a simple literary restriction, but what consequences might it have? If all of those books are mainly concerned with inequality and societal problems, chances are, the city’s citizens will spend most of their time bickering and fighting. But what if those books are instead filled with stories about community and kindness? Probably, people will be inclined to help one another, and everyone will get along on most days.

Regardless of their effect and how strong you believe this effect might be, however, with only 10 books, the people in that city will inevitably stop learning. Thinking, creativity, innovation — eventually, these pillars of progress will come to a screeching halt. Why? Because the pool of ideas is too limited! Try as hard as they may, the best those citizens can do is to rehash the same ideas from the same 10 books, over and over again. Sooner or later, to create more and better output, they’ll need more and better input. The same is true for you as an individual.

Haruki Murakami famously wrote that “if you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

Popular books are usually popular because they’re agreeable. They’ll get you social credit and remind you of what’s common sense, but they’ll rarely truly stretch your brain. There’s nothing wrong with reading these books, but they shouldn’t be the only ones you consume. If you and your friends all read the same few bestsellers each year, and you all agree on their premises, none of you will learn anything new! Where’s the discussion? The thinking? The sparring of ideas? If you all read different books, however, everyone has something to teach to everyone else.

Over the last ten years, I’ve read hundreds of nonfiction books. Without fail, the lesser known ones have been the most satisfying in terms of new ideas, memorable lessons, and, yes, I’ll admit it, making me look smart in front of my friends. So for more than one reason, I agree with Murakami: Don’t run the risk of becoming like the people in that city — set in your ways, a rusty thinker. Read the obscure, the questionable, the forgotten. Read what no one else is reading.

Here are 12 titles I believe will fit that mark. Even if you’re an avid nonfiction reader, I’m confident you won’t have heard of most of them. But if you give them a try, maybe they’ll enter the ranks of your all-time favorites. They sure have done so for me.

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Ikigai: The Wonderful Japanese Concept Everyone Misunderstands Cover

Ikigai: The Wonderful Japanese Concept Everyone Misunderstands

Nik

Explaining Japanese concepts to a Western audience has become a big trend in nonfiction, and ikigai is leading the charge. Naturally, in our almost-typical self-centeredness, we’ve managed to make the worst book about ikigai the most popular one and totally misunderstand the idea.

If you’ve heard of ikigai — and at this point, I’d be surprised if you hadn’t — you’ll probably loosely associate the word with “happiness” or “your life’s purpose.” That’s because our discourse about ikigai has been dominated by a single book, and while it’s a good book in and of itself, unfortunately, it completely misstates what ikigai is actually about.

I love Japan. I went to Tokyo, Kyoto, in Osaka in 2013. In 2022, I also read all major English books about ikigai — thankfully, there are only three of them. So today, I’d love to share what I’ve learned with you. Let’s understand what ikigai is actually about.

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Omotenashi: How the Japanese Remind Us We Deserve to Be Happy Cover

Omotenashi: How the Japanese Remind Us We Deserve to Be Happy

Nik

On our last night in Tokyo, we missed the korot stop. It was nearly 8 PM, and we knew this was our last chance. “Dude! We have to turn around!” My friend and I got off at the next stop along the red Marunouchi metro line that connects Shinjuku and Tokyo Station, then hopped right back in to go the other direction.

I can’t recall whether it was Ginza, Kasumigaseki, or Shinjuku-sanchome station, but I still remember exactly what the tiny stall selling little pieces of heaven looked like. It was a 10-foot-long aluminum box with two glass displays, their bottom half straight, the upper half curved — the kind you typically see in bakeries and cake shops. “Thank god!” The single-pull metal shutter was still open.

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There Are Only 3 Ways to Live a Happy Life Cover

There Are Only 3 Ways to Live a Happy Life

Nik

What happens after you die?

In his book Sum, neuroscientist David Eagleman provides 40 different, often contradicting answers to that question — some harrowing, others hilarious. What if God allowed everyone into heaven, but then we’d all complain about being stuck there with one another, concluding it is, in fact, hell? What if God turns out to be a microbe, completely unaware humans even exist?

Maybe you’ll continue life in a world inhabited only by the people you already know or be forced to live each moment again, grouped by similarity. Four months of sitting on the toilet followed by three weeks of eating pizza, after which you’ll have 24 hours of nonstop stomach cramps before sleeping for 30 years straight.

Despite conjuring stories that happen exclusively in a place from which we can’t return, (and that we therefore know nothing about) Sum holds profound implications about what we might choose to do in the here and now. The mere idea of accidentally becoming a horse in your next life, realizing only in the last second how great it was to be human, could be the exact hoof kick you need to finally start writing your novel, for example.

Sum is Derek Sivers’ single-favorite book of all time. Whichever specific tale it may have been that spurred him into action, one day, he decided to write a book just like it, except he’d answer a different question — a question even more important than what’s beyond death, with even greater indications: While we are on this earth, how should we live?

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You Are Not Atlas, My Friend Cover

You Are Not Atlas, My Friend

Nik

You know the Atlas statue? The one in front of Rockefeller Center in NYC? It’s magnificent. Cast in bronze, Atlas stands strong. Knees bent under pressure, arms spread wide, he carries the entire world on his shoulders.

The story of Atlas goes back to Greek mythology. Fun fact: He’s not actually holding the earth. He’s holding the sky, or what the Greeks called “the celestial sphere” — an orb made of a 5th element (quintessence), contained in which are all the stars.

So why does Atlas have to hold up the heavens? Well, he was on the wrong side of history. In the Titanomachy, the fight between the Titans (old gods, Cronus and friends) and Olympians (new gods, Zeus and friends), Atlas sided with the Titans — and they lost.

Most of the Titans were banished to Tartarus, the prison in the underworld, but Atlas received a special punishment: Hold up the sky for eternity.

Atlas’ story remained so popular over the next 1,500 years after its inception, a 16th century geographer titled his collection of maps “atlas” — a term we still use today, as evidenced by my very own 2002 copy of the “Diercke Weltatlas,” our cartography book in high school.

In another Atlassian reference you may not have noticed, the “Atlantic Ocean” translates to “Sea of Atlas,” and Atlantis, the fabled underwater utopia, roughly means “Atlas’ Island.” Popular guy, this Atlas!

The most impactful of pop references, however, was born in 1957, the year Ayn Rand published her magnum opus: Atlas Shrugged. This novel not only contributed to the lasting mix-up of Atlas holding the earth rather than the sky, it also asked an interesting question:

If the world gets ever heavier the more Atlas tries to push it up, what if Atlas just…shrugs?

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