Particular and Real

Saturday, February 15th

An excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem When Death Comes:

When it's over, I want to say: all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder 
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, 
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

---

I hope to optimize for novelty in my life. New experiences stretch our perception of time and counteract status quo bias. I think it takes proactive effort to guard against the natural tendency for our beliefs to ossify and our habits to become thoughtless rituals.

Steven Levitt’s research on coin flipping as a decision procedure for life decisions shows that people, in retrospect, prefer change to passivity, even when it’s not clear ex-ante.

Change is risky, and passivity is easy. But change is a necessary component of making our lives particular and real.