Welcome to Walker Weekly, a regularly scheduled newsletter where I share things that I find interesting, useful, inspiring, or thought-provoking. If you have anything of your own that falls into these categories, please let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for new inspiration.
Quote I’m Pondering
Theoretical studies are useless on their own. Meaning must be given to them by putting the ideas into practice, so that they take root and change your life, rather than just being clever bits of information that enable you to show off at dinner parties…
Practice enables one to digest theory and put it to work, while undigested theory is nothing but vomit.
Robin Waterfield, on Epictetus and his teachings
In his introduction to The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses, and Fragments, Waterfield gives the best introduction and overview of Stoicism that I’ve ever read. This quote really stuck with me, as someone who is a serial reader and learner. It’s easy to read something and think that you really comprehended it, but without setting that knowledge to work (by writing about it or creating something based on it), all you really have up there is brain vomit.
Question that I’m pontificating about
What makes us like one genre of music over another?
Why do I really enjoy, for example, pop punk and electronic music, while others prefer classic rock and jazz? Are there genetic predispositions, is it based solely on what you heard during your upbringing, or is it something else entirely?
When I was 12 or so, I remember hopping into in the back seat of my friends’ moms 2001 Chevy Suburban. You opened the door and got hit with a sensory overload, mostly from the stench of years of cigarette smoke combined with that nostalgic smell of hot leather seats that have sat in the Texas sun for too long. I can’t remember where we were going, but my friend and I were in the back, and his cool older brother was in the front (in the passenger seat next to his mom). And let me tell you, this kid was cool. He was athletic, he skateboarded, he had the cool haircut, he was rebellious. He even talked to girls I’m pretty sure.
But the coolest thing about him was that he listened to Sum 41 (YouTube), a renowned punk rock band that you’ve probably heard on the radio. And Sum 41 was cool because they skateboarded, had cool haircuts, were rebellious, and had lyrics that 12-year-old me could really identify with:
Storming through the party like my name was El Niño
When I’m hanging out drinking in the back of an El Camino
As a kid, was a skid, and no one knew me by name
Trashed my own house party ’cause nobody cameI know I’m not the one you thought you knew back in high school
Never going, never showing up when we had to
Attention that we crave
Don’t tell us to behave
I’m sick of always hearing “act your age”I don’t wanna waste my time
Become another casualty of society
I’ll never fall in line
Become another victim of your conformity and back down
(I was a straight-A student, had never been to a party, and I didn’t know what an El Camino was.)
So we blasted Sum 41 everywhere we went, and then I bought my own copy of their next album, and eventually I listened to them enough that I actually started liking them. And now, over 15 years later, I still like their music, and my taste has evolved to other types of punk rock, pop punk bands too. Like Wilmette (YouTube).
And I bet if I was born in the 40s and my friend’s cool older brother threw some Elvis on the aux (they had aux cords back then, right?) in his moms 1951 station wagon, I would have liked that music instead.
Book I’m finishing
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. This was a great page turner about a freak storm (in 1991) in the North Atlantic that broke records, inducing hundred-foot waves and claiming numerous lives.
Compliment with this interview of Junger on the Tim Ferriss Show.
That’s all for this week, thanks a lot for following along!
Stay curious,
Walker
Leave a Reply