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Behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman suggests that we have two selves: an experiencing self and a remembering self. . . . Your experiencing self lives in the present and is happiest spending time around people you like. . . .

The remembering self cares about story, and about appearances. . . .

Your remembering self cares about money and mobility deeply. Why? No one wants to be remembered as the person who “didn’t do anything with their life.” Getting rich and moving around a lot adds dramatic, tangible plot-points to your story, which comforts your remembering self greatly. But your experiencing self can easily be less happy. What if you are unable to turn your money into people you enjoy spending time with? What if you move away from the people and places that bring you joy?

— Dave Troy

Never compare your journey with someone else’s. It’s a marathon with no finish line. Someone else may start out faster than you, may seem to progress more quickly than you, but every runner has his own pace. Your journey is your journey, not a competition.

— Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai

It occurred to him that what had seemed perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.

“But if that is so,” he said to himself, “and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify it — what then?”

— Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

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I have now reigned about fifty years in victory and peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to be wanting for my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this present world!

— Abd-el-Raham, 912-961 A.D.

I found a former colleague on LinkedIn this weekend — he was my boss at my very first IT job as an entry-level programmer.

He mentioned that his daughter had graduated from college and is now an ER nurse. That doesn’t sound right because I remember when his daughter was born and it seems like just last week, but I’m doing the math in my head and sure enough it was more than 20 years ago . . .

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They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other — since there are no kings — messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service.

— Franz Kafka

He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.

— Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I was reading about a guy, 62 years old, been bowling in the same league for 45 years . . . he achieves his lifelong dream of bowling a perfect 300 game, and then, to make it even more perfect, immediately keels over and dies.

What a way to go! It’s so important to die at the right time if you want to be remembered at your best.

Actuarially speaking, 62 years is not a long lifespan. But let’s say the guy had lived another 20 years — he would have accomplished nothing and probably wasted away in an old-age home.

Who wants to be remembered like that?

Poor guy. Look at him. Would you believe that 20 years ago he bowled a perfect game?

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

— Joseph Campbell

[S]tories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. . . . Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.

— John Hodgman, Sept. 25, 2001

Remember . . .

I suppose there’s a part of me that still wants the girl in the fishbowl sunglasses and Ramones T-shirt she got from an eBay vendor to invite me to a roof-deck party where a DJ is remixing music that I never heard originally, if for no other reason than it would somehow signify that the faint bags I’m beginning to notice under my eyes even after a good night’s sleep are imaginary. But they aren’t.

— Jason Roeder

I adjure you by the gods, cease to admire material things, cease to make yourselves slaves, first of things, and next, for their sake, of men who can acquire them or take them away.

— EPICTETUS, Discourses, Book III, Ch. 20

When we moved recently, having to pick up everything we own and transport it from Point A to Point B confirmed something I’d long suspected, which is that we’ve accumulated way too much junk and clutter in our lives.

And if I were to walk away from here with nothing but the clothes I’m wearing, how much of it would I really miss?

Answer: Not much.

I’ve come to think of marriage less as a way to spend your life with someone you love, and more as a way to have someone to blame for your life turning out the way it did . . .

LUCY (kneeling and looking at the ground): Look at those stupid bugs … They don’t have the slightest idea as to what is going on in this world.

CHARLIE BROWN: What is going on in this world?

LUCY: I don’t have the slightest idea.

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.

— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

From xkcd: