The Daily Stoic, Woody Guthrie's Resolutions from 1943, A New Beginning, etc.
In which you will awaken your spirit to adventure in 2024.
🎊 Happy New Year!
🤘 2024. Hours to go… I wanna be sedated.
✍️ Woody Guthrie had some great resolutions back in 1943 (including one that’s sort of become my motto). Among them:
Work more and better
Take bath
Eat good — fruit — vegetables — milk
Drink very scant if any
Wear clean clothes — look good
Read lots good books
Listen to radio a lot
Learn people better
Keep rancho clean
Bank all extra money
Dream good
Love mama
Love papa
Love everybody
Keep hoping machine running
💥 Apparently shootings dropped significantly in 2023, says NPR. “Some of the largest decreases occurred in cities that have become almost synonymous with gun crime, like Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. The reduction in Chicago came in areas considered the most violent, with the number of murders and shootings dropping lower than before the pandemic.”
?Did you know that every Rubik’s Cube can be solved in twenty moves or less?
📚 Jason Kottke’s favorite book covers from 2023. “The book cover is one of my all-time favorite design objects and a big part of the reason I love going to bookstores is to visually feast on new covers.”
🎥 Wes Anderson is curating a new film club, “inviting fellow cinephiles and fans to swap ideas in a new digital film club, with stars like Ethan Hawke and Maggie Gyllenhaal guest-curating.”
🌏 What did the Earth look like 240 million years ago? Enter your city name and see how the globe has changed.
💦 Bottled water does have a shelf life, because of the bottle. “A Fiji bottle can last two years, while those bulk packages of Nestle Pure Life bottles have a shelf life of only three months.”
👩💻 How “big” is Youtube? Current guesstimate: 13.325 billion videos. Give or take.
🪹 In search of the buff-breasted buttonquail, “the one Australian bird that has never been photographed.” “It’s a cryptic, dumpy, dowdy bird that, in the exceedingly unlikely event you were ever to see one, would appear as a whirr of wings exploding from your feet and disappearing helter-skelter into the scrub.”
📖 The January 1st entry in The Daily Stoic:
The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather—no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change.
The recovery community practices something called the Serenity Prayer: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future—through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus said, they can control the choices they make right now.
The same is true for us today. If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle.”
❤️ From “A New Beginning,” by John O’Donohue, born this day in 1956:
“Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”
😘 Thanks for reading. Have a good week, and the best 2024 ever. Remember to keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke