Drew's sabbatical blog
I just did a quick debrief call with the travel company that helped us plan and book our honeymoon, Jacada. They told me they were happily following this blog every day during the trip, which made me smile.
Melanie, Delfina, and everyone on the Jacada team were excellent at what they do. The local guides made the trip special; we got to meet and spend the days with some of the most lovely people in Argentina and Chile.
We had the trip of a lifetime, thank you again Jacada.
I’ve been trying to find the word to describe a particular phenomenon. The feeling is when you hear something for the first time, and it immediately and permanently changes your worldview. It’s similar to a flashbulb memory, but it’s knowledge rather than memory.
This is more like knowledge you’ve been primed to receive, with the background experience to solidify it, until you hear it distilled into an ultimate truth. For example, a mentor once told me, “I can’t teach or manage for ambition. By the time I meet an employee, nature and nurture have already conspired to give them some amount of ambition and hustle.” Hearing that felt like knowledge I’d never forget, that I’d always believe, both new and not–like I’d already sensed a version of it but couldn’t articulate it. But now, with the clarity my mentor provided, I’ll never lose that insight. It’s like pulling back the curtain on a ground truth, seeing it for the first time in its axiomatic clarity. What’s the word for that profound, transformative experience?
I asked ChatGPT, and it couldn’t come up with anything specific, but coined a phrase, “intimate resonance.” I like the phrase, but still felt like there must be an existing word that was closer to this feeling. I asked Claude, which first suggested “epiphany.” Which is close, but somehow smaller, and not personal enough. Epiphanies don’t always feel profound and direct. I asked Claude to try again.
“Ah, I see, there’s an even more specific term that captures that deeper, personal resonance you’re describing – “satori.”
Satori is a term from Zen Buddhism that refers to a profound, intuitive understanding or sudden spiritual awakening. It goes beyond just an epiphany or realization of a truth. With satori, there is a very personal, intimate connection and recognition of the truth that is being revealed. The key elements of satori that fit your description are:
- It’s not just an intellectual understanding, but a deep, almost visceral recognition of the truth.
- There is a sense of the truth “clicking” on a personal level, like it was always there waiting to be discovered.
- The knowledge immediately feels integrated and embodied, not just an abstract concept.
- It produces a profound shift in perception and worldview that feels permanent and transformative.
This feels exactly like the feeling I’ve been trying to describe, and searching to name. I’d like to learn more about satori in the context of Zen Buddhism.
PS–Score one for Claude 3 … on this particular task, their free model seems to outperform ChatGPT’s paid model. This makes me want to explore Claude 3 Opus, their Pro version.
I first fell in love with coffee and the cafe experience at The Wormhole, with it’s 80s nostalgia channeled through memorabilia small—Nintendo; Zelda figurines—and large—exact replica Janine Melnitz desk; actual Delorian mounted on the wall. Like many a hip spot on the Milwaukee corridor, it has aged out of its prime. The clever joke on the entryway, “Established 2015,” was an obvious Back to the Future reference … until 2015. The Wormhole will always hold a warm place in my heart, but it’s not quite as energetic as it was (then again, neither am I).
In Avondale, a few neighborhoods north on Milwaukee, I recently discovered The Wormhole’s spiritual sibling in The Brewed. Deriving its homophonic name from the David Cronenberg 80s movie, the space is overflowing with horror-genre memorabilia. I don’t think the two shops are actually related, though they do serve the same roaster’s beans.
Though I’ll never again spend months straight of Saturdays and Sundays alone at the Wormhole like I used to, it’s fun to see a new spot pick up where my favorite shop left off, and to see the younger clientele and baristas blasting music, joking around, and having fun at a space that feels like it’s there just for them.
You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.
Dr. Sukhraj Dhillon
I saw the above quote in a book years ago. At the time, my interest in meditation had begun, but I had not practiced very much or very consistently. The advice sounded nice, but I couldn’t imagine believing it myself, let alone following it. I was just too busy, and the things I was busy with just too important.
Years later, this advice still sounds difficult to follow. But it also feels (to me) more achievable, and much truer. Its meaning has deepened for me as well, such that I can now read this quote in several ways, all of them seeming true.
I think this is a good definition of wisdom in general. Wisdom is a type of knowledge that gets truer the more experience you have with it, the more you believe in it, the more you adhere to it.
We were at a wedding this weekend—the first one we’ve attended since our own. It was a beautiful day with great friends. And it had me reflecting on our first few months of married life.
A question people like to ask couples in the weeks and months after their wedding is, “do you feel different?”
Day-to-day life doesn’t feel different. But we do feel different. After completing a ceremony and ritual like that, in front of all your friends and family, something does change in you. Taking a vow, crossing a threshold of nearly universal human experience.
Attending a wedding also feels different to me now—deeper and more meaningful.
When I started getting into chess a during covid, I had this vision of future weekend trips with friends at a lake or beach house, where there’d be a chess board, and people would play games throughout the weekend between more active activities.
We’re staying this weekend with friends at an Airbnb, for a wedding in Carmel, CA, and my vision has become reality.
We have some chess players in the house, and although I’m 0-3-1, I’m having so much fun. Playing a few games with friends during downtime, just hanging and talking, it’s exactly what my vision depicted.
In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), psychologist William James wrote:
It is true that we instinctively recoil from seeing an object to which our emotions and affections are committed handled by the intellect as any other object is handled. The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. “I am no such thing,” it would say; “I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.
James is saying that we resist pointing the intellect at matters of the heart, or in this case the spirit. He goes on to say that although this reaction is normal, it’s unnecessary. We can separate the “existential” analysis (what is the thing, where does it come from, how does it behave) from the “value” analysis (is it good or bad). In the end, the value analysis for mental states is intuitive. We can tell the good states from the bad. We don’t need to prove it with science. But in his time, people twisted themselves in knots trying to find anatomical or otherwise deterministic support for arguments that were, at bottom, value-judgments. And people still do this today.
More from James:
Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simpleminded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox’s discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle’s organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. All such mental overtensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover. And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined.
In short, the most moving, inspiring, devout, holy people in history—people he calls “religious geniuses”—likely all would have been diagnosed with a mental disorder today. And their suffering was real. But the results of their feelings, the impact of the world, and our judgments of their value, are not pathological.
A true suburban 90s kid, the first piece of clothing I coveted was of course a pair of baggy Tommy Hilfiger carpenter jeans. You remember the ones, with embroidered logos on both the back tag and the carpenter loop. That was the fourth grade, when fashion was more about fitting in than standing out.
Like anyone, my look changed as I figured out the identity I wanted to project to the world. Preppy in college (Ralph Lauren and Vineyard Vines), upscale casual in my first job (Billy Reid), and, finally, full tech bro (Patagonia, Lululemon, and company swag).
Lately I’m feeling like I need a new look. It’s probably not a coincidence this is happening as my work identity is in flux. But also I think I’ve just been lazy in how I dress for the past few years. I used to care a lot about my wardrobe, but in the past few years I’ve cared a much less. Making more opinionated clothing choices gives you a “look.” And there are benefits to having a look:
I feel like I don’t have a look right now. Maybe soon I’ll find a fresh one. If you have suggestions, let me know! Everyone should have a look.
“I wouldn’t go down that alley.”
“I wouldn’t answer that phone.”
“It’s a trap. Run away!”
I love horror movies. Part of the genre’s fun is in imagining what you’d do differently as you watch the characters navigate their world. Of course, we all believe we’d be smarter than at least first victims–we wouldn’t open that door or answer that phone.
But last night, I learned I shouldn’t be quite so confident. I was leaving my improv class. It was late, dark, cold, and rainy. As I unlocked my car, there was a sound. It was just like a car door closing. It came from just a few feet away, but there were no other cars around. The block was deserted.
I looked at the car. I’d been half-distracted, still on some adrenaline from class. So I focused up and tried to replay the sound in my head, wondering whether I’d imagined it. Had someone been crouching behind my car and gotten in? Almost certainly I’d misheard. That I knew. So I got in the car. Still it nagged me.
“Obviously, no one is here. But I may as well check.” Phone flashlight on. Back seats clear. “May as well finish checking.” Out of the car, open the trunk, all clear.
I could see the whole block under the yellow street lamps, there was nothing around, nowhere to lurk. There was only one more place to check–under the car. But now my heart rate was way up. In the horror-movie version, the killer would be lying prone on the street under the car. I knew there was no one, but still I had to psych myself up to look …
… all clear.
The best horror movies create a world in which the character has options, but none of them are good. You the viewer can’t imagine what you’d do differently.
I could have started home, 99.9% sure I had no unwelcome passenger. But probably I’d have arrived home only 99.5%. If I’d still resisted checking once in the garage, I’d have been thinking about it as I lay in bed.
In the moment on the street, I was more embarrassed at myself than I was scared. In the gentle light of day, I’m laughing at myself. I’m replaying it again, enjoying memory like a little movie in my head. But on that empty block, in that yellow light, just a few blocks away from the actual setting of many famous horror-film murders, I wasn’t 0% scared.
Ask not what Brown can do for you … but why other companies can’t. The other day I walked into the UPS Store in a huff. I’d ordered two new pillows from one of those online sleep product companies with a 30-night return guarantee, and I needed to exercise that option.
The pillows were just badly designed products. I’d always been a die-hard featherhead, but Wirecutter’s review of Nest’s customizable shredded foam pillow was compelling enough that I decided to try it. Huge mistake. Adjusting the filling makes a huge mess, I could never get the pillow to be thin enough to sleep on, and the more I tried, the less comfortable it got.
Despite the return policy, the Nest is really bad at returns. From requesting a shipping label to repacking the product, everything was difficult. You have to email someone to initiate a return, and when you do, they try to talk you into keeping the product! Then you have to restuff the pillows, which makes a huge mess with all the shredded foam. After I thought I finally had it set, I realized they’d sent only one label, but the pillows had separate return bags.
Cue Elliot at UPS. Elliot greeted me with a smile and asked how he could help. I explained the whole thing and he looked me right in the eye and said, “I got you, just give me the pillows and the return label, I’ll make it work.”
I love UPS. Because this is how it always how it is, they just make life easier. So Elliot made my day. And though Nest Bedding really frustrated me, I was also comforted knowing they will either become better at helping their customers, like UPS is, or they will not be around forever.
sabbatiblog 