hello,
I’m Zhao Xuandian , welcome to the first issue of Letter from the Tavern, and Zitong Yue .
This newsletter has no fixed theme, my positioning for her is:
- Share my experience and inspiration of the week, I hope it will be helpful to you too;
- I can write easily and you can read happily.
In this issue, I mainly share a book and a podcast.
- The Naval Collection: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness , and I recommend you to read the English version
- The Screws Are Tightening: How An Ordinary Man Can Live
A book: The Naval Book: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
The Chinese version of this book has just been published for two months, and it is the most popular book recently.
As the title suggests, this book captures the wisdom of Naval Ravikant (I used to be a “Teacher Na”). However, it was not written by Mr. Na himself, but was collected from the remarks of Mr. Na’s followers about him. When it comes to the record of the disciple’s words to the teacher, do you immediately think of the “Analects of Confucius”? That’s right, this book is published as a volume in the same format.
Let’s take a look at Mr. Na’s wisdom about wisdom first:
My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions. Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment. They’re highly linked; knowing the long-term consequences of your actions and then making the right decision to capitalize on that.
My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions . Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment. They (wisdom and judgment) are highly correlated; know the long-term consequences of your actions, then use that to make good decisions. (Translated by me, not the original Chinese version) #wisdom
When I saw this passage, I had a feeling of enlightenment.
Wisdom, it is indescribable. Just like Lao Tzu said: Dao can be Dao, very Dao. If there is anything we can agree on about wisdom, one of them is that the elders have more wisdom.
Why are elders wiser? Teacher Na’s definition answered: because they lived long enough, the decisions the juniors faced, they all faced, and they knew the consequences. Conversely, it is the elders who define wisdom by their length of life.
In high school, my brother (then he was a PhD in mathematics, now he is a professor and Ph.D. supervisor) taught me mathematics, and he repeatedly emphasized the importance of definitions – only when we know the definition and properties can we make good use of it . The same applies to the wisdom here: before Teacher Na defines it, wisdom is vague, and cultivating wisdom is even more impossible; after Teacher Na defines it, wisdom becomes clearer . Looking at things from the perspective of wisdom, wisdom can be exercised !
+ Supplementary reading : Inspiration Club Issue 57: What is “Bending into the Game” , Mr. Luo talked about his understanding of wisdom: Wisdom in life is the ability to look at problems from multiple identities and perspectives.
As you can see, I read the English version because I couldn’t wait to read the book when I learned about it before the Chinese version came out. Later, because of sunk costs, I kept reading the English version. I also recommend the English version to you for the following reasons:
- The English e-book can be downloaded for free ( Almanack of Naval Ravikant ), download it first and read it, there will be no pressure to buy the book and not read it
- Because it is a collection of Mr. Na’s remarks, including his tweets, most of the words used are common words, and there is no pressure to read English directly.
- It is recommended to download e-books in epub format, and then transfer them to WeChat for reading. If you encounter uncommon words, you can easily query them in WeChat reading.
- Read English directly without destroying Mr. Na’s original intention because of translation
- Because of the difference in thinking and language between Chinese and English, many truths are repeated in English, which plays the role of reflecting and annotating each other in Chinese and English, and has a sense of freshness and suddenness.
- For example, Mr. Donna advised us to cherish time. He said: Trade money for time, not time for money. You’re going to run out of time first . Done, time is running out.
I recommend the “Book of Naval” again, and recommend the original English version of Almanack of Naval Ravikant .
A podcast: What kind of life can an ordinary person have | The screw is tightening
Within a week, see happy’s predictions for life in ten years . What we really need is more sunlight, sweat, reading, better eating and sleeping , not screens, sofas, impressions, videos, etc., he said.
This reminds me of listening to this podcast earlier: Vol.34 Dialogue with Wang Bang: What kind of life can an ordinary person have – the screw is tightening .
In the title, I left out two words, because what I really remember and yearn for in this show is the life depicted by Ms. Wang Bang, and nothing else.
On the show, she mentioned:
I think the key is to be able to get along with people, that is , getting along physically , that is, getting along face-to-face . I think this is very important, because our life is too illusory, we live in the clouds, that is, everything is on the clouds.
like we are today. You remember when you came to our small village, when we went for a walk together, it was very late, and then we were walking down the alley, which was an empty street, and then we were walking towards this church. The experience is that you are sitting in this study of your own right now, and then I am sitting in my study, and the two of us are talking into a microphone. This experience is very different, very different.
Because you will smell the smell of that one village, this smell is coming from this field of it, and you can also hear this cow’s cry, and then these are very specific, very physical. Then you go to the church, and you will hear his bell. His bell is also very physical, and it can directly respond to your hearing, that is, through your hearing, and then sense you. The whole body of your body will give you a very quiet feeling at once. This quiet feeling is different when you sit at home and turn on the tape recorder, and then listen to a recording of this church. It’s an immersive feeling when interacting with people .
Then, one of the biggest functions of a non-governmental organization is actually this kind of immersive feeling. It gives you such a space, and it allows you to gather rationally with the characters. Then, for example, in the day center I mentioned just now, you go to that place, enter the kitchen, this kind of fireworks, this kind of aroma of the cake that was just baked, and then the other volunteers talk about the weather , Talking to the parents in your own home is short, you can’t experience this feeling in front of the computer, you can’t experience it at all. You have to go to this place, in the kitchen, while washing the dishes and talking to the people around you, and what to say, the daughter-in-law of our family, what kind of illness she has been seeing recently, and what does the doctor suggest? . Then this kind of short topic among parents, these topics you will not talk about in the “Central Meeting”. For example, if we are sitting here, we will not talk about such trivial topics in detail, that is, this triviality is this kind of contact between the parents, the short, the physical contact, the physical contact, it will Make your whole body happy. I have never felt that this sense of pleasure is the only motivation for our existence in this dark world . (This description begins at 0:57; text is transcribed by Feishu Miaoji)
Sorry for quoting such a large paragraph. However, isn’t the physical contact and immersive feeling between people described by Ms. Wang Bang beautiful? When I listen to this podcast again, I’m still moved by it.
I am deeply aware of this. Three months ago, I returned to Hangzhou after a year and eight months of Bei Piao .
I came to Beijing alone, with few friends except my colleagues and a classmate who was always locked up on the university campus because of the epidemic. Therefore, after work, I don’t want to go out, I always stay at home, and I stay in the company for a lunch provided by the cafeteria on weekends. I am totally on one leg of “work only, no life”. When work is going well, the sense of achievement at work can make up for the lack of life; when work is not going well, the lack of life is a disaster. In 2021, for the whole year, I feel like a lonely ghost cabinet ?, floating in Beijing. It’s hard to find someone to talk to, so the most common phrase I say is “a lonely grave in a thousand miles, nowhere to speak is desolate “. Beijing is very big, but for me at the time, it was a cage. (The above is all self-inflicted)
After returning to Hangzhou, I found an old community with a strong atmosphere of life. There is a vegetable market at the door of the community. Every morning when I go to work, I see surging crowds of grocery shopping, uncles and aunts bargaining, and I hear the cries of “XXX is cheap”, which is very kind. On weekends, I buy groceries and cook. The mixed fruity aroma in the fruit shop?, the fresh seasonal vegetables in the vegetable shop? with some earthy atmosphere, and the lively prawns in the aquatic shop? double the immersive intimacy. In addition, I try to invite a friend in Hangzhou to have dinner every weekend. Offline and face-to-face communication, kanning trivial things in life, tripled the intimacy.
This is how I feel now: have a life . You can choose to stay at home, as long as this is the way you like; you can also choose to go out and go to more places (not too far, just outside your home), to meet more people, and to discover the beauty of life.
my week
- Published ? Watching the Tavern , and moved some of the previous articles to the Tavern. Hope to keep opening
- I am preparing a new newsletter, which is the letter from the current pub, and I hope that I can stick to it.
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