Obsidian Sync 2024-12-05 12:35:11

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
+#### Meditations for Mortals Chapter 5
 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 Chapter 
+#### Meditations for Mortals Chapter 8
 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.