When I was a kid, I loved books. Now that I’m an adult, I still do. But now, I understand a little more about myself, which means I understand a little more about why I love books so much.

A realization you start to have as you get older and more socially aware is this: You can’t just talk about anything with just anyone. Whatever topics you’re most passionate about, chances are good that the majority of people around you don’t share that passion. If you’re really into the history of aviation, then at best you might be able to tell an interesting story or two before people’s eyes glaze over. They have the stomach for a quick visit to your world, but people have their own interests and most won’t overlap perfectly with yours.

And that’s only for emotionally uncontroversial topics! If people aren’t into Colonial-era history or board games or whatever, at least the only emotion they tend to exhibit is boredom. But there are plenty of topics that people get downright mad about. Even (especially!) if they don’t know anything about that topic.

Imagine that you’re really into Australian botany. You think the plants from down under are really rad and you’ve been reading about them and studying them your whole life. You know as much about the topic as just about any other expert; you might be in the top 1,000 people in the world in terms of your knowledge on this. Then one day, you start to tell someone about a cool Australian flower. You’re sort of always prepared for people to not think this stuff is as cool as you, but still, you think about it a lot and you want to talk about it, so you test the waters with a casual acquaintance. How would you feel if instead of reacting with feigned interest or unhidden boredom, they instead got angry? They not only completely disagreed with you about everything you said, but they told you that only a horrible person would have even said what you’d said in the first place?

I would imagine you’d be confused! Especially if it was clear this person had never read even a single thing about Australian botany. But they know where Australia is, and they know what plants are, so they refuse to acknowledge that there’s any gap at all in your respective knowledge bases.

This is a tangent, but: The plural of anecdote is not data. You don’t become an expert on a topic just by hearing words associated with that topic enough times. Listening to pundits on the news argue about whether the space program is a good use of the federal budget doesn’t make you an expert in rocket science, no matter how many times you do it. It’s just noise, and noise doesn’t make you an expert just because you listened to a lot of it.

So, that’s the rub. The more of an expert on a particular topic you become, by actually reading and studying primary sources and refining your ideas in a forum that’s meaningful and progressively developmental, the fewer and fewer people can meaningfully converse with you on that topic. Either they’re too bored to care, or they’re aggressively, angrily ignorant and take offense to things that no person who understood the topic would take offense to. (That isn’t to say that all people with the same level of knowledge always agree, but being able to disagree meaningfully and calmly because you understand the topic is worlds apart from angry, ignorant screaming.)

When you get to that point, you read books.

Books are a way to have that conversation. To engage your mind in a calm but passionate way. To learn about the topic while still having space in your own mind for discourse. You might not be able to communicate with the author in real time, but you can explore the ideas at whatever pace you like. You can write down thoughts as you go, you can research and return, you can even write ideas and arguments of your own in longer form. You can disagree with the book! Or parts of it – you don’t have to just take it as gospel. But there’s no anger in the disagreement; the book doesn’t yell back, even if you do. The parts of your brain wired to react strongly to social danger as a threat to your tribal status are calmed somewhat by the lack of a breathing face, replaced by abstract words.

I love those conversations. I love that chance to open and engage my mind. As much as I love people, there are simply some parts of my brain that aren’t for 99% of them. But give me a book and an evening, and that part of my brain will be very happy.

The connection people want isn’t always the connection you want to give. Quality time, affection, intimacy – these mean different things to different people. Even people you care deeply about.

It’s fine to use your words to explain how you show and experience these things. But don’t let your explanation be the end of the conversation; make it the beginning. Sometimes you’ll need to be uncomfortable to make someone you care about comfortable. That’s what loving people is. Taking care of them when they need it.

Just because your circumstances are bleak doesn’t mean that someone else’s aren’t as well – heck, they might be bleaker still. Scaping together few resources can make two people very wary of one another. But reach an understanding, and you have more than you ever had alone.

The point is, there’s always another dog in the desert. But you can choose if it’s a fight or if it’s a pack.

It is such a joy to have friends under my roof. I love when they say, “Thanks for having us,” because my answer is always the same: “If it were up to me, you’d never leave.”

Life is wonderful ship, but it takes a full crew.

Is it always sense to come in out of the rain? Sometimes we need to have a little fall on us. How else can we know?

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”

Only movement saves us. Stillness is entropy. Entropy is death.

Giving up halfway doesn’t reset you to the beginning. It strands you in the dire, unholy middle.

Rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Today I reverse-engineered a puzzle; I designed a puzzle to get to an answer that already existed. I had a code for something, and I wanted (for my own reasons) to give it to someone else in the form of a puzzle. I had to figure out a math puzzle that would lead to that number, and only that number, while still being interesting to solve.

Is this practical? Of course not. But the answer to the question of “when will we ever use this in real life” is: to have fun, same as anything!

You should not let the particulars of your relationship with someone affect how nice you are to them. And vice versa – you should not let how nice someone is to you dictate the particulars of your relationship with them. Surprising as it may seem, those things should be uncorrelated in your mind, because they’re uncorrelated in reality.

Being nice, polite, and respectful is virtually costless; it takes so little to do it that it basically rounds to zero. But what do we know about things that cost nothing?

1. If something costs nothing, and has any upside at all (such as making you or another person feel nice) then you should do it almost all the time.
2. If something costs nothing, then someone doing it is not a good indicator of their commitment to anything else.

As people if they’ll sign a petition to open a library and you’ll get plenty of signatures. Ask people if they’ll pay a dollar to sign said petition, and you’ll still get some – but fewer. Make it ten dollars and it will be far fewer. That’s because the cost of signing the petition is so low that people will do it even if they barely care about a library – heck, even if they don’t care at all, but just want to be nice. But when there’s a real cost attached, people respond accordingly.

So if someone is nice to you, that doesn’t mean they’re trustworthy. It doesn’t mean they’re loyal. It doesn’t even mean they’re smart. Anyone can be nice.

You should always be polite unless absolutely necessary to do otherwise. But you should also evaluate people on their actual actions, not just how nice they are in conversation.

People who have encountered specific problems before are usually better at dealing with that problem again. For the most part, I think folks assume that this is because they know how to solve the problem, but I don’t actually think that’s correct.

You can know how to solve a problem without ever actually encountering it. You can read the instructions. You can even just figure it out. So why do people who’ve encountered a problem before often do better at it, if it’s not knowledge?

It’s because they don’t panic.

If you’ve solved a problem before, the problem tends to worry you less. You don’t freak out, and remaining calm is one of the best ways to solve any problem. Of course, you can solve a problem a hundred times and if you still panic, you’re more likely to make mistakes than someone who has a tenth of your experience but a calmer demeanor.

Experience with one thing often brings you calm when dealing with that one specific thing. But more people, I think, should just get experience with staying calm. An even temper will help you more than information in most situations.

Heaven is sitting by my fire, a horde of kids around roasting marshmallows and laughing together. My father would have been very pleased. The only thing missing was his singing – he’d have added music in a way I could not, but the joy in my heart was from him.

I try to be to these kids what he was to me. I told many stories of him. He lives on in his grandchildren.

It was a banner day, Dad.