💡🧐 Curiosities | Round 8
💡🧐 Curiosities | Round 8
On work and love, vintage summertime vibes, the dream of Solomeo, the good life, and more
Welcome back to The Comma Project - a place for leaders and seekers, where I share the stories and insights that guide me along the way, in hopes that they might matter to you, too.
I’m back with round 8 of Curiosities - where I unearth and round up digestible gems of insight on the art of seeking, becoming, and building a life of significance.
I hope you enjoy - and if you do, I’d be grateful if you pressed the little ❤️ button at the top left corner of this piece, and shared it with a few people you think would also enjoy it.
Reply to this email and let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Devin
[YouTube]
Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement address at Duke’s graduation
3 rules for life:
Bust your ass
Just swing the bat and pray is not a bad approach to a lot of things.Pay attention
I suggest falling in love with anything and everything, every chance you get.Fall in love
Find something where you love the good parts, and don't mind the bad parts too much - the torture you're comfortable with. This is the golden path to victory in life. Work, exercise, relationships - they all have a solid component of pure torture, and they are all 1000% worth it.
Don’t think about having. Think about becoming.
We're embarrassed about things we should be proud of, and proud of things we should be embarrassed about.
Making work easier - this is the problem.
So obsessed with getting to the answer. Completing the project. Producing a result. Which are all valid things. BUT, not where the richness of the human experience lies.
The only two things you ever need to pay attention to in life are work and love. Things that are self-justified in the experience, and who cares about the result.
Stop rushing to what you perceive as some valuable endpoint - learn to enjoy the expenditure of energy that may or may not be on the correct path.
The quotes just speak for themselves.
Jerry’s marks are so Comma it makes me want to run through a brick wall
[YouTube]
My writing soundtrack for the week
[Book]
Brunello Cucinelli: The Dream of Solomeo | My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism
I am definitely going to be talking about this in the coming weeks’ essays/podcasts, but I also feel compelled to put it here.
I heard about this book about a year ago, and I’ve been on the hunt for it ever since. I’ve found that it’s often available in Italian, but English versions are very rare.
I checked every couple of months since I first heard of it, and I finally was able to snag one through Amazon through some rare bookseller, and it is by far the most expensive book I’ve ever bought.
But it has been so worth it.
This book spoke to my soul. It speaks of humanity, beauty, craftsmanship, leadership, work worth doing, a sense of place, and a life well-lived.
Like Jerry’s commencement address, this is so Comma that as soon as I finished the book, I decided I simply must go to see Solomeo (the home of Brunello Cucinelli, both the person and the company). I immediately booked a round-trip plane ticket to Italy, and an Airbnb in Solomeo’s town center.
I decided to go and simply be in the place, and to write and create from whatever arises in me.
I can’t wait.
Yung Pueblo on the good life
Yung Pueblo is worth a follow. He reminds me of David Whyte, but even punchier in his writing.
His writing is half poetry, half essay, and I just bought all 3 of his books.
Yung Pueblo makes me think, teaches me new ideas, and reminds me of those I’ve learned but forgotten.
[Essay]
Scott Galloway on some interesting ideas for revamping the tax system
It’s a long essay, but one that I really enjoyed and learned a lot from.
In it, Scott presents a new lens through which we can understand the work world and the tax system: earners (wealth mainly coming from a paycheck) vs. owners (wealth mainly coming from investments).
I’d have to think more about these ideas to fully encapsulate my viewpoint. There are some things I disagree with, like getting rid of the lower capital gains rate, but overall, I like the idea of simplifying the code, and even increasing some of the earning thresholds for tax brackets - and perhaps even raising the upper tax rates as well.
While I don’t like the sweeping narrative that emerges at times that “labor” is being brutally squashed by “capital,” I think his point about the overall tax burden that lower-earning “labor” pays relative to their overall income being increasingly stifling in the current economic backdrop (with interest rates, inflation, college tuition, and home prices up big, and outpacing wage growth, especially relative to 40 or 50 years ago) is an interesting one.
What do you think?
If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a curious friend and tell them which idea they'd love.
Click here to watch and listen to spoken versions of essays, as well as other stories and musings, on YouTube.
To watch and listen on podcast apps:
Click here to read the archive.
Click here to follow on Twitter.
If you were forwarded this email, click the button below ⬇️ and enter your email to subscribe.