October: Welcome!
That deep breath out with the blackout to a climactic or cathartic final scene, that trembling breath in as you hike down from a sunset view in crisp November air, that vibrant still and silence by a bonfire at a desert campsite — those transient moments hold what is most precious yet most fleeting. 可遇不可求, as a Mandarin saying would call it — that which can be encountered but cannot be sought.
Perhaps, however, this frame of spirit can be prolonged, experienced more profoundly, more attentively, and with more reverence. We can wade through what might otherwise be no more than a strange, passing sensation of simultaneous heaviness and lightness in our chest cavities, and instead understand that it is a window to our relationship with transcendence, a beauty that shines a light on our humanity, our impermanence, and our daring all at once.
In the course of day-to-day life, we optimize our emotional experience as a one-dimensional variable. We seek joy, from the company of others, the security of what we know and what is ours, and the hope of what we can attain, and we avoid hurt, from disappointment, frustration, and rejection. My wish for this newsletter is that it will tap into the seldom-used y-axis. Just as much as joyful ones, let us seek equally meaningful experiences, whether those further our self-understanding, reveal the grandeur of the past and the future, or help us appreciate and cherish the intangible and inalienably human. Just as much as hurtful ones, let us seek equally to avoid meaningless experiences, those that reduce our human journey to a quest for our simplest, animal psychological needs, those that sever our individual thoughts from the universe and the common human condition.
This newsletter is a quest for us to exercise our capacity to intuitively distinguish glimpses of the meaningful from the dryness elsewhere — or, to reframe it, to impute and construct the meaningful where it may naturally come in a trace, diluted from. To become more attuned to this aspect of our spiritual life, we need to pin, underline, collect moments of transcendence where we find them. Each month, I will share what I have found to provoke reflection, along with a brief commentary (such as this one) to discuss the big questions I have been thinking about.
Important: For this project to be successful, I will need your help in filling out these sections and finding a broader range of sources. If you, too, find — or even create! —anything that suits the mission of this newsletter — or really, anything that is interesting and worth my time — please use the button below, and I might include it in next month’s edition. I look forward to your submissions!
Now, onto October’s (admittedly short because it was last-minute) recommendations:
Literature and Philosophy
Quotes selected from Exit West by Mohsin Hamid:
He “evoked in her a protective caring, as if for one’s own child, or for a puppy, or for a beautiful memory one knows has already commenced to fade”
“The end of the world can be cozy at times.”
“courage is demanded not to attack when afraid”
“for personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we reflect depend much on what is around us”
“they saw each other more, although not more often”
“we are all migrants through time”
Excerpted from Addresses to the German Nation by Johann Gottlieb Fichte
“The natural impulse of man, which should be abandoned only in case of real necessity, is to find heaven on this earth, and to endow his daily work on earth with permanence and eternity; to plant and to cultivate the eternal in the temporal—not merely in an incomprehensible fashion or in a connection with the eternal that seems to mortal eye an impenetrable gulf, but in a fashion visible to the mortal eye itself.”
Art, Music, and Performance
This amazing vocal moment from Broadway actress Eva Noblezada:
Society
This BBC story tests our idyllic notion of familial love — but is it not, perhaps, most gritty, most resilient, most powerful when it grows in the least hospitable of grounds?
How deeply are we committed to respect for individual agency — what about when the consequences are unimaginable?
Oh, I forgot to explain my title! “It Only Takes a Taste” is a number from the musical Waitress (which I would also highly recommend). “It only takes a taste when it’s something special,” goes a lyric, and I hope that even in this abbreviated form that necessarily does not flesh out the whole picture (but that you can hopefully fit into your day), you take something away from it.