There is a surprising thing I don't succeed to achieve nowadays: listening to podcasts [probably among some other stuff but I'd need to think more about it]. I now realise how much that activity is tight to my commute, be it on a bike or in a bus / subway or just walking [yep, these are my only ways of commuting, no car policy at home -- some Uber rides sometimes but it's only a handful of them a month generally speaking].
Anyway, one of the last one I listened to was a discussion between Andy McCune & David Perell in the North Star Podcast. Okay I'll try to insert it directly at the bottom of this post [yep, be cool, I'm just coming back to this].
One thing struck me -- if you wanna jump right into it, it's happening at 1h37min -- Andy referred to it as something he heard 'from a friend the other night': Love, family and invention. Like his friend would have said 'if I have love, family and I've invented something, that's all I need'.
He explained it as:
- love: feeling you have people who you see, who warm your heart, who make you hair stick up [...] you see them and it's like life is whole when you're with them
- family: people that you trust, people that you know that no matter what happens they're always gonna be with you
- invention: feeling that you're an individual, that you were put on this planet for a reason
And he finally wondered wether 'what if those were just the 3 things to strive for'. I do think there is a kind of wisdom to this. I'm not entirely sure about that 'invention' part - I mean, I'm not sure about that word and if it translates the whole feeling, but I get the point. I like the fact they put creativity in that word, and beyond creativity, they include curation also. At least, that broadens the concept but it doesn't feel enough. It's maybe something more around 'building'. Like, to me, it seems less about if I've invented something rather than if I've built something. This word sounds more team-oriented as well. I'm happy to be a 'cog in the wheel' when that wheel is building some heavy stuff for society. I'm less into individuality actually [maybe that's a cultural difference]. In that regard I can't recomend enough Marc's latest essay: It's time to build. I digress.
Bottom line, thanks to Andy & David for that discussion, I enjoyed it a lot. And in a world that looks more and more complex to the most of us, getting your happiness down to such 3 'basics' [whatever the 3rd word and nuance you pick up] resonates a lot.
