The Right Note: Bionic Reading, Passive Patience vs. Active Patience, Intuitive Eating
Issue 31
👋 Good morning from Florida! I’m Michele, and this is The Right Note, a mix of the most interesting things I’m reading, writing, and learning about this week.
Give it, give it all, give it now.
This Annie Dillard quote about writing applies way beyond writing.
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.
Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Bionic Reading
I couldn’t believe how font-weight could increase my reading speed. It’s incredible. When I was reading the right-hand side, it felt like I was unlocking 100% of my brain.
Can you believe it?
Passive Patience vs. Active Patience
I think a lot about patience. And if I’ve done enough to achieve the goals I’ve set out to achieve.
Then I read about active patience vs. passive patience, and it helped frame my struggle.
Passive patience is waiting for the world to give you what you want. Rather than chase your dreams, you wait for just the right opening that always seems to be around the corner but never comes. Rather than go after the love of your life, you sit back and wait to be courted. This is the wrong type of patience.
Active patience demands action and intention, even while waiting for the results. Active patience is so much more than merely “waiting” for something. With active patience, we continue striving toward our goal with anticipation of what’s to come, but without fear or frustration.
Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.
Intuitive Eating
In this experiment in 1928, weaned infants could choose as much of any food as they wanted. The foods they ate weren’t mixed, seasoned, or altered.
This experiment hoped to obtain information on the following points:
Whether infants of weaning age could and would, when removed from the breast, choose their foods from those placed before them, without aid, as do adults, and in sufficient quantities to maintain themselves.
If they did so choose, would they eat few or many of the large number of articles offered, and would they eat indiscriminately what was nearest at hand, governed only by their caloric needs
This experiment reminded me how much our bodies are capable of correctly choosing the required foods and that we don’t need to force ourselves on a strict diet since our bodies know way more of what we need (than our minds do).
I found this part fascinating:
One of the infants with rickets had cod liver oil served on his tray. He drank it without prompt until his rickets were healed. After that, he didn’t take cod liver oil anymore.
It seems like if you give a child a reasonable variety and balanced food, he will eat what his body needs.
None of the kids in the study overate even though they could eat as much and as long as they wanted.
A healthy body knows when to stop eating whole foods. Today, the problem comes when we eat food with fake flavors.
✍️ Quote of the Week
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
— Greek Proverb
That's all for this week.
👋 See you next Friday,
Michele