Virtually every word is like that because a word is an ancient artifact It's like an animal in some sense It has an evolutionary history and it transforms across time And each word carries the echoes of its past with it too because each word attracts other words in a particular unique way so it kind of lives in a word ecosystem as well and the ecosystem contain information about the history of that word and you think well why is that important it's like well hey guess what you think in words you talk in words you have all these archaic entities these words these living entities that you use it's like the more you know about them the more you know about you the more you know about other people and the better you are at formulating and communicating your ideas there's nothing left there's nothing lost in that kind of investigation nothing there's nothing but gain there Your ambition if you have any sense is actually to become competent Do you want to be competent and dangerous or do you want to be vague and useless It is definitely the case that there is no more exceptional form of the capacity to be dangerous than to be articulate And so it's a moral endeavor in some real sense To become articulate is to become the master of your own tongue Every advantage comes with a disadvantage So if you're extroverted you're social and you're positive but you're impulsive and you can tilt towards hedonism and you can't stand being alone No matter where you land in the temperamental landscape you're going to have your associated faults and temptations You've got a goal and you'll see that as you progress towards the goal there'll be obstacles that emerge and some of them you don't want to confront That's why it's useful to order your room Chaotic room makes you anxious Why Too many pathways man People don't really repress the things they don't want to face they just fail to unpack them You want a horizon of ever-expanding possibility We're built to walk uphill and when you reach the pinnacle of the hill you want to stop and appreciate the vision but the next thing you want is a higher hill in the distance Beware of unintended consequences It's like oh no this thing will just do what I want it to do and nothing else turns out that not only is what we want from each other the real thing but that's also the adventure of your life And so if you aren't truthful and that means unfortunately especially at the beginning when you start to be truthful it means deeply coming to terms with your inadequacies in humility So it's very painful Without that you don't have the adventure of your life You have the role that you've acquiesced to And that'll take all the meaning out of your life It's good for you to go take your place in the world Have some ambition Have a vision Have a goal Have a strategy Try to be a good person Not because it's your duty precisely because that's the proper way to live You sit on the bed and say okay man I'm ready to learn something What's one th
