Obsidian Sync 2024-12-03 07:06:56

content/daily-notes/2024-12-02.md

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 ### 2024-12-02
+Another day of doing a lot of Math Academy and watching several shows while taking breaks.
 #### Meditations for Mortals
 Read Chapter 5 today titled _Let the future be the future
 On crossing bridges when you come to them_, and it feels like I needed it because I found myself worrying about 2025 and what it will bring for me.

content/daily-notes/2024-12-03.md

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+### 2024-12-03
+
+#### Meditations for Mortals
+Read Chapter Eight titled  _Decision-hunting: On choosing a path through the woods_
+
+> The topic of deciding and choosing naturally calls to mind one of the most famous poems ever written, Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken.’ You know the one: about the two paths diverging in a ‘yellow wood,’ and how the speaker chooses ‘the one less traveled by,’ a choice that he says ‘made all the difference.’ On the standard interpretation, Frost’s poem is little more than a clichéd celebration of the American dream. Spurn convention! Do your own thing, believe in yourself, and success is guaranteed! But as the poet David Orr explains, in his book also entitled The Road Not Taken, it’s really something much stranger. Frost’s poem undermines the conventional reading on almost every line. No sooner has the speaker told us about the road less traveled than he admits that, in fact, previous travelers had left the two paths worn ‘really about the same.’ And on closer examination, he never asserts that his choice of path ‘made all the difference’ in his life, either. How could he know, since he never got to compare it to the other one? What the speaker of the poem may be saying is that ‘ages and ages hence,’ when he’s an old man, he expects that’s what he’ll claim. Because he’ll want to rationalize the choices he made – like everyone always does.
+> 
+> The true insight of Frost’s poem, on this interpretation, isn’t that you should opt for an unconventional life. It’s that the only way to live authentically is to acknowledge that you’re inevitably always making decision after decision, decisions that will shape your life in lasting ways, even though you can’t ever know in advance what the best choice might be. In fact, you’ll never know in hindsight, either – because no matter how great or appalling the consequences of heading down any given path, you’ll never learn whether heading down a different one might have brought something better or worse. Even so, to move forward, you still have to choose, and keep on choosing. If the speaker in ‘The Road Not Taken’ hadn’t consciously made some choice, he’d have made a different, unconscious one instead – to remain standing at that fork in the path, frozen in ambivalence, waiting for something to happen.
+
+#### The Dune Prophecy Podcast
+[The Official Dune: Prophecy Podcast | HBO - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO79iP69FaZPiplPugys7l_9jNnS0a3oT) #tv #dune
+
+I had somehow missed checking for the official podcast before starting the show. But I am glad I remembered yesterday. Spent the morning binge-listening to three episodes and realised there is a lot of detail that I did not fully notice while watching the show. There is also some interesting trivia from the Dune lore that really clarifies the plotlines in the show. Loved it!