Reframe Your Inbox (Interesting Ideas Edition)

Hey everyone—welcome to another edition of Reframe Your Inbox, a pseudo-semi-weekly(ish) email newsletter in which I share some meandering thoughts on politics, work, and life.

I recently published a tribute to Congressman John Lewis on Medium: “Remembering John Lewis, America’s Pilot Light.” If you watch only one thing today, perhaps make it this conversation between Lewis and Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy.

Here are three things this week: 1) a reflection on interesting ideas; 2) some Reframe the Day-related news; and 3) a few pieces of high-quality internet content.

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FIRST THING

One evening this past week, I was washing dishes and listening to Ezra Klein’s podcast, as I do many evenings. On this particular evening, instead of thinking about the interesting ideas that Ezra and his guest were discussing, I was thinking a meta-thought about how enjoyable it is to listen to interesting people discuss interesting ideas. Or read about interesting ideas. Or attempt to write about interesting ideas.

Then I had something resembling an interesting idea. Theoretically, one of the privileges of being a college student is that one is encouraged to explore interesting ideas for the sake of exploring interesting ideas. This is, of course, a dramatically oversimplified view of higher education that doesn’t take into account the biases and inequities of the actual experience, from who gets the chance to attend to how you’re treated while you’re there to why it costs so much to how you’re supposed to pay for it. Despite the asterisks and the systemic shortcomings it embodies, the appealing notion of the university as a space for ideas persists.

In this mostly hypothetical universe, once you leave the world of ideas, an interesting idea becomes more of a means to an end—something to be consumed, packaged, monetized, turned into “useful” information, or otherwise utilized for a socially accepted reason (i.e. it helps you achieve a goal or produce something that some sort of marketplace considers valuable). In this world of work, ideas are either a means to an end, or they’re just a bonus—something that entertains you during your commute or that you get to enjoy at the end of the day when you’ve finally gotten through everything you have to do.

Anyway, the interesting idea I had while was washing dishes was this: During my college years, when I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to explore the world of ideas, I was mainly interested in the world of work. The time I might have spent reading and writing and pontificating, I instead spent sending emails and deploying productivity hacks and working my way through to-do lists for my college radio station. These days, meanwhile, much of the time I spend sending emails and deploying productivity hacks and powering through to-do lists, I now wish I could instead spend reading and writing and pontificating about ideas.

To be clear: This isn’t a lament about the passage of time, or a complaint about my present circumstances, or a thinly veiled hint at an impending career shift. I’m immensely fortunate to have a lot of time to read, write, and explore interesting ideas. But it is, I think, an example of the paradoxes of life.

It’s also an example of the constant tension between present us and future us. When this realization first entered my mind the other night, I immediately thought, I need to go back to grad school! I’ll get a master’s in… writing? History? Literature? I’m not sure, but I must take action! A younger me might have followed this passing thought much further, interpreting it to mean that it’s time to make some radical changes to my life to better align how I think I want to spend my time with how I’m currently spending it.

But that’s the difference—or at least a difference—between 23-year-old Adam and 33-year-old Adam. Instead of acting impulsively on this grass-is-always-greener restlessness that flares up in most of us from time to time, I can simply notice it. I can be aware of it. I can acknowledge it as one of life’s weird little ironies. I can recognize that it’s not necessarily a profound insight but more likely just a random passing thought. I can see it as a reflection of my/our/humanity’s compulsion to (re)assure ourselves that “once I do X or have Y or achieve Z, then I’ll be happy and content.”

I can do all of that, and then—perhaps after writing it down as an interesting idea to start a newsletter with—I can let it pass. I can pivot to gratitude and appreciation for the present moment, for the life I have right now, for the opportunity to to read interesting books and listen to interesting podcasts and have interesting conversations and share interesting ideas on platforms like this.

Awareness. Appreciation. Gratitude. Presence. Those are some interesting ideas.

SECOND THING

What if you don’t have a world-changing, heart-racing, life-defining purpose? That’s the question I tackled in a piece of audio content I wrote and recorded for London’s Shelf Help digital book club earlier this summer. You can read the written version on my website.

A few weeks ago, I had a fun conversation with Aun Abdi, host of the Book Talk Today podcast. Check out our conversation on YouTube or Spotify, or just search for “Book Talk Today” wherever you get your podcasts.

THIRD THING

“I have never competed with other people. It just never occurred to me. I have to sort of work it up to understand what people are talking about when they complain about what this person did or that person shouldn’t do. … I only compete with myself, with my standards. How to do better the next time, how to work well.” That’s Toni Morrison, quoted in a 2003 profile in The New Yorker, which was republished last month.

“The story that violence is normal depends on the story that some of us are more deserving of safety than others, and some are more deserving of pain. It depends on the story that some of us should just expect to be hurt and that the rest of us bear no responsibility for that hurt. It depends on the story that some of us no longer even feel pain—if we ever did. It depends on a history awash with erasure—not just of violence, but of resistance to and healing from violence as well. It depends on stories of unworthiness, of numbness, of monstrosity, and of forgetting. And it depends on institutions that embody and enforce those stories.” That’s Danielle Sered in Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair.

“I have always embraced the idea that the pursuit of a worthy, deep goal is never for a day or for a year, that the journey is long and hard, and no one can say how long it will take. You take in all the information you can, you decide what is right, and once you make that decision, you pursue it. You commit, with perseverance, steadfastness and faith.” That’s one more thought from John Lewis in Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.

That’s all for this week (and probably next week, too). As always, thanks for reading.

—Adam