#100: Happy Hundred!
Happy Friday!
And welcome to the 100th weekly edition of this newsletter! Firstly, I think this calls for a wonderful photo of a whale. You're welcome.
Secondly, thank you for reading, and continuing to be interested.
Thirdly, there are changes afoot that I think you'll enjoy.
I write this newsletter for a few different reasons, but one stands out: the writing keeps me honest.
Every Friday since December 2016 I have written a little something to you all, and the discipline reminds me to pay attention to the universe, to the things I'm doing, to the books I'm reading, to the places I'm visiting, and to the people I meet.
As John McPhee may once have said: 'Writing is a way of being in the world.'
So thank you for keeping me honest over the past 100 weeks.
But what about the future? Where will the next 100 Happy Fridays take us?
One area where I'd like to improve is focus. At the moment I simply write whatever is on my mind, or about whatever I've been doing that week. Sometimes I surprise myself with a good story, sometimes I disappoint myself.
For the next 100 episodes, I'd like my writing to be a little more focussed. To that end, I propose writing each month according to a theme, making a series of four (or five) newsletters that explore the nooks and crannies of some esoteric interest of mine - and hopefully yours.
Starting with Episode 101, our first month's focus will be on Gifts. What is a gift? What, why and how do we give? How does a gift make us feel? What is the relationship between gifts and money? And what the blue blazes am I going to do about Christmas?
That is all I have planned so far. I am gloriously open to suggestions - you are, after all, the ones reading this humble submission of mine.
What would you like to read more about? Cycling? Comedy? Crap hostels?
Please, if you have any special interests, send them over by replying to this email and I'll do my best to slot them in over the next 100 episodes.
Part of my motivation for making these themes monthly is that I hope we can turn this newsletter into more of a two-way thang.
With four (or five) weeks to develop a theme, your response to the first week can become the foundation for the second, and so forth, as we move forward together.
There are now over 120 intelligent and discerning humans subscribed to this newsletter and I just know you have thoughts and ideas that would knock mine into a cocked hat. I'd love to hear them.
So this week will be the last of my weekly rambles. There'll still be plenty of space for whimsy if the need arises, but from next week, I promise, things will become a little more focussed.
Thank you for your eye balls!
Thighs of Steel
The other big news this week is that I have now been officially anointed as High Priest of Promo for Thighs of Steel.
As you know if you've been paying attention to my weekly missives, Thighs are a wonderful collection of hugely inspirational human beings. These human beings are planning to expand the ride next year, and raise tens of thousands more for grassroots refugee community projects.
With more saddles to fill, they needed someone to take on responsibility of spreading the word. For their sins, they've asked me.
My job will be to make connections with other Adventure for Good people to try and reach cyclists who would be mad and glad enough to take on a Thighs of Steel saddle.
As I can fulsomely attest, the experience will be one of the most magical of your life. If you know of any humans who would be interested in becoming part of the Thighs adventure story, please get in touch by replying to this email.
Ride easy!
Now On: The Viktor Frankl 5-a-day Book Club!
Membership Criteria: Read 5 pages a day of Man's Search for Meaning to complete the whole darn text in only 28 days.
Catch up on the past 25 days online.
Day 26
Today's pages (p139-144) open the final part of Man's Search for Meaning, written as a postscript to the book in 1984: 'The Case for Tragic Optimism'.
An attitude of 'tragic optimism' means to remain optimistic in spite of life's 'tragic triad' of pain, guilt and death. Or, alternatively:
How ... can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects?
Frankl's answer is hidden in the etymology of the word 'optimism', which is derived from the Latin 'optimum' meaning 'the best'. To be optimistic, therefore, is not to be deliriously blind to one's circumstances, but rather to make 'the best' one can of any given situation.
With regard to the 'tragic triad' of pain, guilt and death, this attitude of optimism means:
turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment;
deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better;
deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
Frankl notes that tragic optimism is not the same as happiness. An attitude of tragic optimism - making the best of our circumstances - can be consciously pursued and attained; happiness cannot be commanded in the same way.
[H]appiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy'. Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.
You can't force yourself to laugh; you must have a good reason. In just such a manner, happiness itself is not a worthwhile aim. Identifying meaning and purpose in our lives makes us happy as a side-effect.
And so Frankl returns to the modern mental health crisis that emerges from an absence of meaning, in what he calls an 'existential vacuum'.
[P]eople have enough to live by but nothing to life for; they have the means but no meaning.
This existential vacuum manifests itself in three extremely damaging symptoms: depression, aggression and addiction, and Frankl deals with these in turn.
Frankl acknowledges that not every case of depression and suicide is rooted in a feeling of meaninglessness, but he also suggests that such depressive thoughts may 'have been overcome had he been aware of some meaning and purpose worth living for'.
The job of the logotherapist is to help their client find that purpose.
In his treatment of suicidal cases in Austria, Frankl observed many survivors who were eventually grateful that their suicide attempts had been unsuccessful. These cases became the model for his treatment of others:
Even if things only take such a good turn in one of a thousand cases ... who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later?
But in the first place, you have to live to see the day on which it may happen, so you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.
Frankl presents the famous Robber's Cave study by Carolyn Wood Sherif as evidence that aggression is also assuaged by the discovery of shared meaning between the belligerent parties. Meanwhile, the third symptom of the existential vacuum, addiction, is overwhelmingly accompanied by an 'abysmal feeling of meaningless'.
Having put forward his case for the importance of developing an attitude of tragic optimism, Frankl turns next to 'the question of meaning itself'. But that's for next time...
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We continue next week...
>> INPUT
[WORDS] I was born in the same year as 'party animal', 'phone sex' and 'poutine'. 1982 was a big year in words. Merriam-Webster have created a browsable and searchable database of words according to the year they were first used. It's beautiful.
[MEN] Sperm Count Zero by Daniel Noah Halpern (GQ) "A strange thing has happened to men over the past few decades: We’ve become increasingly infertile, so much so that within a generation we may lose the ability to reproduce entirely." The article ponders the relevance of males: are we destined to extinction?
[DUST ALLERGIES] This is going to be pretty niche, but... Dust mites are 75% water and dessicate and eventually die at a constant relative humidity of less than 50%. Environmental assessment and exposure control of dust mites: a practice parameter (2014) rounds up what you can do to control these pesky irritants.
[WRITING] Draft No. 4 by John McPhee. This is a fabulous collection of John McPhee's writings on his writing process. No one in this country seems to have heard of John McPhee, but he's a literary legend in the US. One book, Levels of the Game, tells the story of a single tennis match. It's 149 pages long. You can read the original articles that make up Draft No. 4 in various places online, including The New Yorker, but the book is a trove of inspiration and a pleasure to read.
[PLASTIC] How the heck can we clean up a plastic continent three times the size of France from the middle of the Pacific? Maybe like this? The Ocean Cleanup project was started by a 16 year old after he went diving in the Med and saw more plastic bags than fish. Now 24, Boyan Slat's vision has launched and is out in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch doing its thing. I bloody hope it works.
OUTPUT >>
To Do List Bankruptcy (October) "Last night something snapped. I woke up at 3 a.m. silently screaming into my duvet."
The Viktor Frankl 5-a-Day Book Cult: Day 25 (October) "Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary."
The Viktor Frankl 5-a-Day Book Cult: Day 24 (October) "The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure."
Lessons from 10 Years of Hashimoto’s Hypothroidism (October) "I couldn't find happiness by following a FODMAP diet, testing myself for diabetes, or taking Magnesium and Vitamin E for adrenal support. It was both harder and easier than that."
The Victor Frankl 5-a-Day Book Cult: Day 23 (October) "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered."
...COMING UP...
Celebrating a year of my infamous Friends Matrix.
Volunteering at the wonderful Bristol Bike Project.
My first day of work helping to make new connections with Thighs of Steel.
Thanks for reading, have a glorious weekend - and here's to another 100 Happy Fridays!
Much love,
- dc
CREDITS
David Charles wrote this newsletter. David is co-writer of BBC Radio sitcom Foiled, and also writes for The Bike Project, Elevate and Thighs of Steel. He can be found here: davidcharles.info and on Twitter @dcisbusy
Pantsdrunk, the Finnish Art of Relaxation, via Kottke.org.