You have no idea how weird and wild and wonderful humans are. You overestimate them, underestimate them, and fail to understand the vast range of their complexity.

In my experience, most humans can imagine other humans as being about a maximum of twenty percent more or less than themselves on any given personality metric. So if you imagine the most charismatic person you can conjure up, realistically you’re imagining a person about twenty percent more charismatic than you. Likewise, if you imagine the dumbest person you can think of, this phantom is actually only about 20% dumber than you, because that’s the limit of your imagination.

Humans are so, so, SO much more varied than that. The smartest person alive is a hundred times smarter than you, and the dumbest person alive is a hundred times dumber. Likewise on any metric you can think of.

So don’t go into a room thinking you can predict how the people inside it will behave before you’ve met them. You will be surprised!

Paths close up if not used. Weeds grow, flagstones get buried, steps erode. It’s the act of walking, even when difficult, that creates the path that’s easy to walk.

If it looks hard, just remember – it ain’t gettin’ any easier.

Sometimes you simply cannot wait for the leaves to turn and the air to turn brisk. Let it be calmer, cooler, a little more soothing. An autumn balm. I am grateful.

When we believe something is impossible, it shuts down our creativity hard. How can you look for solutions when you know for a fact that there aren’t any?

But make one small shift and say, “this isn’t impossible, it’s only difficult,” and suddenly you’re charged up. Difficult things are interesting to solve, and the creative juices get flowing.

There’s a famous scene in Star Trek where Captain Kirk is faced with a simulated battle as a test. The test doesn’t hide it’s theme – the simulated battle is unwinnable, and the actual “test” is about how you react in that kind of situation. True to his character, Kirk hacks the computer before the exam to change the parameters of the simulation so he can win the battle. When confronted, he says: “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.”

What a mindset! About a bajillion things throughout history have been “impossible” until someone did them. Almost universally, what follows is a bunch of other people doing the same thing, because now it isn’t impossible. It’s only difficult.

It was well-accepted for all of human history until very recently that humans couldn’t run a mile in under 4 minutes. That was simply out of our ability; humans can’t run a mile that quickly and more than we can fly. And then in 1954, Roger Bannister did it, obtaining the world record. That record lasted forty-six days. In the single year after this feat, more than a hundred people ran a sub-four-minute mile.

When everyone thought it was impossible, no one tried to do it. Once it was only difficult, it became a challenge to overcome.

What things do you think are impossible? Maybe, just maybe, they’re only difficult.

“You don’t have to be nice to me just because you’re upset.”

Of course I do. Of course we all do. That’s exactly when we have to be nice.

You will be upset in your life. If you let it rule you, let it cause you to be unkind, you have lost yourself. You don’t need to ignore the source of the emotion; you can, and should, discuss it. But for the love of humanity, be kind.

Tired is what you feel when you’ve worked your body and mind to their fullest and, satisfied with the day’s labors, you have a warm hearth and home waiting to embrace you.

Weary is what you feel when you’ve worked your soul to its fullest and you don’t.

It’s almost impossible to go a full year without a major tragedy or difficulty. It’s equally unlikely to go a full year without something marvelous happening.

The scales won’t always balance year by year, but in the long run, the arrow of time points toward happiness if you let it.

I find certain necessary activities to be very unpleasant. One of my least favorite activities is going into a store. Sometimes you have to go into one, but I never enjoy it. The lights, the atmosphere, the endless aisles of confusingly-organized stuff… ugh.

So to get through that experience, I go into what I call “monk mode.” This works best by myself, because a big part of it is sort of retreating into my own mind, letting my body do its thing on mostly auto-pilot while I let my brain think about other, more pleasant things. I walk out of the store with the stuff I need, having barely registered the experience.

This is a very useful ability, honed over many years. The ability to separate my higher and lower consciousness functions, letting my “higher mind” wander and enjoy itself while my more basic brain moves my body around to complete rote tasks is helpful in many situations. One drawback is that while my sensory perception can be managed by the lower brain, actual interaction with intention is only capable (so far) from my higher one. So if someone talks to me, my options are: respond like a dismissive jerk, or leave monk mode. Hence why I don’t like to go into stores with other people especially.

I’ve never really discussed this with anyone else – is “monk mode” something you do? Do you have some version of it? If so, what do you do?

A few nights ago, while my son (Age 7) was impressing me with his math skills, I gave him a little puzzle. I said, “Three squared equals nine. Four squared equals 16. 5 squared equals 25. What does ‘squared’ mean?” He asked a few follow-up questions and in short order had figured it out.

Tonight, while out at dinner, he asked me how to write ‘squared’ in an equation (his incorrect but very logical guess was that you actually drew a square). While writing it out, I gave him another little puzzle, shown in the picture. The only hint I gave him was that this was called “cubed” and wrote it out, wanting to see how he’d think about it.

With almost zero hesitation, he said, “Oh, 3 is one more than 2, so it must be one more times. So it’s 125.” Not only did he logic out what it meant with ease, but the actual equation was instant mental math for him.

My father once told me that I was about 7 or 8 when he realized that I was going to be smarter than him, and the great joy that brought him as a father. I don’t know if I ever actually lived up to that prediction, but now I certainly know the feeling.