Book 234 - A Year of Magical Learning (Part 2/5)

Reflection Title: Simplicity - "It Takes no skill to understand something, but mastery to write it"

Book – Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Part 2 of 5)

Book Description:

In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem, and in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what Taleb calls the "antifragile" is actually beyond the robust, because it benefits from shocks, uncertainty, and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. The antifragile needs disorder in order to survive and flourish.

Reflection:

KISS – Keep it simple, stupid!

Have you ever heard that saying before? I love that saying as it sums up so much in such a compact, 4-word statement. This short little acronym might not look like much, but I know that it probably took someone a lifetime of living to craft this message.

Simplicity sounds easy, but simplicity is hard.

The universe is simple.

I don’t understand it, but it is simple. The universe operates on basic laws that humans maybe, sort of, kind of understand. There is a chance that we know 1% of how this universe operates, maybe. It is probably .000000000000001% in actuality.

When I say the universe is simple, I don’t mean that as a negative. I genuinely mean it as the best compliment I can give anyone or anything. The universe is only simple because it has spent billions of years refining its laws and tweaking its operating system to bring the perfectly balanced ecosystem that gave us life and allowed me to type out this sentence.

We should all take a page from the universe and do our best to be as simple as we can as well in our own life.

Simple is beautiful. Simple is elegant. Simple is mastery.

Just like the author says, "It takes no skill to understand something, but mastery to write it".

Since the day that Emilia has passed away, I’ve been searching for the right words to describe how she makes me feel inside, motivates me to be the best person I can be, and how I’ve dedicated my life to chasing her little, tiny lion tracks through the wilderness of my mind to stay connected with her and never lose her again.

It took me a year and writing the book, I Can’t Imagine, to distill this feeling down to a phrase that I called Living for 2.

It took me writing a 400-page book to explain what Living for 2 meant and to try and describe it to someone else. Working through my thoughts in I Can’t Imagine helped me to distill this feeling down to a phrase that I called Living for 2. 400 hundred pages of text to get this out of my head, and I honestly still didn’t really even come close to understanding it myself. If you asked me to describe it to someone else quickly and succinctly, I would stumble through so many ideas and thoughts that it probably didn’t make sense.

I knew what I was trying to say in my mind, but getting it out into words that someone else could quickly understand was incredibly challenging. However, as time slowly passes, and we put Living for 2 into action each and every day of my life, my understanding of it gets simpler and simpler.

After 2 ½ years, I’m proud to say that I can now distill down Living for 2 into a 5 page book today if you forced me to write it out. My dream is that by the time I leave this Earth, that I can sum it up in one beautiful sentence that anyone will understand. That one sentence that anyone can understand will have undoubtedly taken me a lifetime of reflection, writing, and living to master.

It will look simple, but that is the point. If you are striving for mastery, you are really striving for simplicity.

Question: How close are you to being able to describe your why in a simple manner that anyone can understand?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb