A short article where I write about five things I learned,
enjoyed, and thought worthy of sharing each week on Friday, 5BF is my personal
weekly article that I share on my blogsite. I borrowed this idea from Tim Ferriss
(from ‘The Tim Ferriss Show’ podcast and the author of ‘4 Hour Work Week’; his is
a weekly email called ‘5 Bullets Friday’). Since its #1 edition back in September
2019, 5BF has undergone quite a few changes in its structure and form; more specifically
it has got cleaner and tighter. But the most urgent of all questions after one gets
to know what 5BF is, is that why do I write it, and does anyone read it?
To the latter question, a simple answer is, NO. I did try to
share 5BF on my social media apps, but I received no consistent viewers. I
guess I am not a good marketer, or to put the blame outwards, people just don’t
get the point of such educational posts; internet has become a big network of
jokes, to quote someone from the internet. So why bother writing it?
Before I give any answer, let’s see what I write about and
how. The usual worthy-to-share points on my 5BF are: books, articles, podcasts,
movies, TED talks, Tech related stuff, personal opinions and more. It usually
takes me about half an hour and more to write a single edition of 5BF where I
gather the top five things I learned and enjoyed in the past week and then put
them all together in a coherent, easy to read, and collected article. Ready for
people to access and get learning!
The fact that I hesitated and still do in sharing 5BF shows
that it is something deeply personal to me, almost like a secret; an open secret,
yes, but a secret nonetheless. I write it because it ceases my week and beacons
me to pause and search my life for the things I have learned. And most importantly,
5BF not only allows me to collect and contemplate upon them, but also push me to
keep learning every day, every week. Then of course, it collects. One 5BF upon
another, these articles gather and pile, and do what my blog title states: ‘life’s
memorization’ (hifz e hayat).
So does it, or should it rather, matter that nobody reads
5BF? And matter to the point that I shall start considering if it’s worth writing
them at all? It has mattered, even to this point, but I am proud to say that I
haven’t stopped writing them, despite the indifference of the outward motives. ‘Nothing
outward shall ever help us in a lasting way. It is an inside job’ says Anne
Lamott, writer of the book ‘Bird by Bird’; and so, for me 5BF accomplishes and
continues that inside job: of growth, of mattering, of doing my part, of memorizing
life, of understanding, and of caring…
About six weeks ago, 5BF reached its fiftieth edition. Despite a single year gap in between these fifty episodes, I am glad to have
continued posting an episode each Friday. Looking back on 5BF, I see one of my
most cherished achievements. So, in order to celebrate this win, I went back
and reread all the fifty episodes and noted down everything I had shared therein.
From the data I gathered, I have now made a statistical measurement named ‘5BF
in Numbers’, as well as a list of my favorite fifty points from the fifty episodes and what I learned from them.
So, without much further ado, enjoy me celebrating the
legacy of my weekly ‘5 Bites Friday’.
5 BITES FRIDAY in 'N U M B E R S'
***
LEARNINGS From The FAVORITES
50 things I learned from 50 episodes of 5BF
*From the ARTICLES I shared
1 – The Tail End by Tim Urban
A firey slap on the faces of its readers, this articles taught me how the importants things of my life, precisely the relationships with my loved ones, are quickly running out. If not in the tail end of my life with the relationships with my family and old friends, I am well entering into it. Quality time is what matters from now on.
2 - Subtract by sivers.org
An article which shifts our prevailing perspective from adding things in our lives in order to improve, to actually subtracting things and achive the same or even better results. Something which I apply in order to have more time on my hands, this article taught me that change can begin here with you, not from something that is out there.
3 - The Strangeness of Grief
From 'The New Yorker' by V.S. Naipaul, this article introduced me to how fittingly lengthy and thereby actually moving an article or essay can be. Naipul talks about many events of grief from his life, yet how the grief itself remained always so strange to him. I also learned from this article how cats abandon and isolate as they near their death.
4 - I thought I'd have accomplised a lot than I have by thirty
This really funny, witty, and casual article by Alex Baia taught me to laugh at my own unfulfilled dreams despite the frustrations, to take myself less seriously than I do, and to enjoy whatever I have accomplished while jokingly apologize to my present and past self for whatever realistic or unrealistic goal I didn't get around to meeting.
5 - I still love Kierkegaard
Something about Kierkegaard awlays touched me: maybe because that he was super-anxious all the time, or that he failed at love due to his prudishness, that he had a bad posture, or maybe because he was the first existential philosopher. In this article the philosopher Julain Baggini defends and elaborates who Kierkegaard was and how he's ever more relevant today than he was in his age. This article echoed and validated my very niche fascination with a forgotten philosopher.
6 - Your brain is not for thinking
Lost on the effortless and highly efficient task of our brains for keeping track of our body, we think of our brains as the thinking organ only. This article points back our attention at how our brains do its organic job by keeping check on our bodies in terms of 'deposits and credits'. The article taught me that keeping myself in good health could have a very significant impact on my brain, and thereby, on my mind as well.
7 - When it is good to be bad
Self control, and the amount of trust we put on it, is a sham. What works is rather a planned self-restraint, whereby it is preparation, and not will power, that leads to success. This article taught me how allowing oneself to be bad for a single specific day, amidst diet plans and the likes, is actually good for one's longterm plan.
8 - The right thing to do
While much of our discussion may revolve around good and evil, right and wrong, we nevertheless feel conflicted with the dilemma of equally 'good choices'. What then is the right thing to do when all options are morally correct? The first, second, and third persons perspective of this article taught me to make better choices when faced with dilemma of 'good choices', being both good to myself and others.
9 - Reading John Gray in war
The author of this article, being a soldier in Afghanistan on America's 'war on terror' mission, writes about his experiences of reading the American philospher John Gray, and his view regarding the dangers of idealism. This article taught me that taking an idealistic mission to its extreme and inflicting it upon the masses is wrong, now whether that is Hitler's idealism or America's or mine.
*From the QUOTSTIONS I shared
10 - 'The difference between the person who doesn not read and the person who cannot is none.'
11 - 'Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal'. - Neitzsche
This quotes reminds of 2020 Netflix movie 'The Trial of Chicago 7', where I learned that sometimes ego, the sense that you are more rightoues than others, can interfere and endanger the end goal you and others are trying to achieve together.
12 - 'Truth maybe vital but without love it is unbearable.'
This article based upon Jeff Bezo's speech at Princeton highlights this quotation with accute profundity.
13 - 'Advertising would not be so prevalent if we were not such suggestive creatures'. - Alain de Botton
In his article 'Only the Lonely' Cody Delistraty says, 'I often think about loneliness, how it can be devastating, but also how it can be a space of reflection that is hard-won; a form of wisdom, a master emotion that colours all other emotions. Importantly, I now feel that without a willingness to face loneliness we forfeit our freedom.' Forfiet our freedom, yes. The freedom to know ourselves, to become our own persons!
14 - 'One must lift the inner cloudscape by one’s efforts, or perish under it. I chose, by that blind instinct of survivalism we mistake for choice, to lift!' - Maria Popova
At some of the most desperate times, you have to fight alone. YOU have to take care of yourself.
15 - 'How we spend our days is actually how we spend our lives'. - Annie Dillard
We miss out on making our todays and tomorrows any worthy, yet still hope for a different more successful future waiting for us. Dillard's quote is the testament of how success happens everyday, and how longterm achievement is the product of many countless days.
16 - 'Smile, despite yourself!'
It takes courage to smile when the heart is at despair. But do! Go against your melancholy when a smile matters so much, both for you and those around you. Don't give in.
17 - 'What I'm suggesting, Daniel said, is, if you're telling a story, always give your characters the same benefit of the doubt you'd welcome when it comes to yourself.' - Ali Smith (Autumn)
And also in real life. Choose kindness and love over hate whenever there's something or someone you do not understand. Good intentions outnumbers good actions.
18 - 'When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago’. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Rest assured, you won before, you can win again!
19 - 'She has wanted to sleep with other people, of course. One or two in particular. But the truth is she has good impulse control. That is why she isn’t dead. Also why she became a writer instead of a heroin addict. She thinks before she acts. Or more properly, she thinks instead of acts. A character flaw, not a virtue.' - Jenny Offill (excerpt from 'Dept. of Speculation')
I think she's just being modest. Thinking is a virtue, and not a character flaw.
20 - 'Oh reputation – it is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving.' – Edward VIII (from Netflix series ‘The Crown')
21 - 'There’s almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you're waiting for an organ. It is an inside job.' – Anne Lamont
22 - 'What is grief if not love persevering?'
*From the BOOKS I shared
23 - David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
The myth of David and Goliath wasn't a myth, it actually happened. How? Because David actually had the upper hand over the unbeatable giant that was the Goliath. All it took for David was some courage and an awareness that he can do it. Gladwell's this particular book, my favorite of his, taught me to firmly belief that the Davids of this world can actually do the unthinkable: beat the Goliaths. Go underdogs!
24 - Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
No other nonfiction book has softened my heart and broken through my armor of self-hate and unending ambitiousness as did Brach's brilliant book of buddhist meditations. Not only did I crya lot during this book, which is weird in itself, but maybe for the first time ever, I truly and consciously loved myself. This book taught me self-love. It's also a book of great anecdotes.
25 - Adolphe by Benjamin Constant
One of my favorites classics and one of the best, honest, and true love stories ever told. This book, within its less than hundred pages, tells a love story that from from one passionate lover and ends at two passionately miserable ones; never before had I read a book that represented both the merry-days and the unbearably painful days of love so amply and honestly.
Every reader has one book that strongly resonates with them. For me it was Rhys's lusciously told and intimately lonely book 'Good Morning, Midnight'. Its title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem, one of my favorites poets, and is like Dickinson's poems just as intimate, beautiful, eccentric, and lonesome. Although it has a lonely female protagonist living in 1930s Paris, I nonetheless felt consistently that this book was written for me.
Reading Candide and finding Voltaire as wise, intelligent, and significant as I had heard he'd be was a great pleasure. A short book that contains in it a tour of 19th century world and all its evil, Voltaire's masterpiece offer a journey from innocence and flawed optimism to experience and true optimism. This book taught me to mind my own business. The world and people in it are so chaotic.
What a book! Don't let its simplicity and ordinary-reading, short paragraphs fool you. What Offill says is the extraordinary and that we miss everyday in our own ordinary lives. Offill's quick, fragmanted, and saying-ful prose compliments brilliantly her memoir/fiction. Even for its number of well-picked sayings from great writers of the past, which there are plenty, this book can be crowned one of all time favorite literary novels. What did it teach me? To write, and write in your own way.
After the journey that Harari took us about mankind's rise from animals to gods in his bestseller 'Sapiens', in this book he imaginitvely explores how the humans might transform into another species all together. The avalanche of future driven by technological advancement and the power that such advancement would give to mankind's ambitiousness is provocatively and shockingly told by Harari. The lesson is simple: the future will not be what we are used to.
*From the MOVIES/DOCs/TV I shared
30 - A Separation / Judai (2011, Iran)
One of most emotionally investing movies to watch. Asghar Farhadi's movie only intensified my love for Irani cinema, to which I see deeply resonate with. A movie about honesty, about the prevailing of truth no matter what the consequences. This movie starts and ends on the same scene, a true representation of Irani Cinema's simplicity, but what happens throughout the movie is truly a worth-watching and morally involving movie. Honesty, is what it taught me, and the courage to be so.
31 - HUMAN: A Documentary (2015)
I remember being struck while watching this. The close-up shots of ordinary people from all around the world talking with such raw honesty and truth about topics that are revelant to the core of our being humans, this documentary showed me how difficult, and verstile, and polarizing being human really is.
32 - The Trap by Adam Curtis (2007)
If anyone tells me that he/she is bewildered by what is, or has been, going on around world and cannot make sense of it, I would recommend that person to watch this documentary right away. Curtis's ingenius films investigates our past and coheres the results with such intellegence that by the end of the film, every viewer goes: 'Aha, so that's what happened and therefore this is happening'. And it is not just this particular documentary, every film from Curtis is not only worth watching, but essential.
33 - The Soviet Story (2008)
A gut-wrenching film. Truly devastating. I wouldn't be surprised if someone declared that he have lost faith in humankind after watching this shocking documentary. A film about the inhumane and viciously unthinkable era of Soviet rule over in Russia during 1930s. Regardless of its context and the brutalities of Stalin, this documentary taught me how incomprehensively pathetic humankind in general can be, and how threateningly capable we are of such atrocities.
34 - The Crown (Netflix)
Each episode of The Crown is a thoroughly gripping and brilliant film on its while contributing to completing story on the life of Queen Elizabeth. The script, the production, the cast and acting, the storyline and how its told - everything about this show screams brilliance and perfection. Both historically illustrative and a joy to watch.
35 - Black Mirror (Netflix)
Warning: do not watch more than one episode of Black Mirror in a day, or else you will look like you've just come of a trauma. A haunting yet brilliant imagination of how our future might look like based on lives we live today, this show never stops surprising. The lesson I learned is not to lose my connection to simplicity, saneness, and whatever that makes me human.
36 - The Office
I am actually on season 7 of The Office in my rewatching of it. Never before have I immediately started rewatching a TV Series just as I finished it. The genius of this show is that it is geniunely hilarious while being scripted. And the characters, while some of them have weak points, all of them work so well together. It is like watching a family live together and realizing you've become a part of it too. It is just so good! And I might as well say it: The Office is my most favorite TV show of all time.
37 - Another Round (Denmark, 2020)
'Only from the heights of an infinite good mood can you observe below the eternal stupidity of men (or life) and laught over it', says David Hume, and for these four 40-year-old high school teachers in this movie, alcohol provides them that good mood. I know life can be unendingly miserable as it is for the Mike Mikkelson, the protagonist of this movie, but the best we can do is have a good time whenever we can. 'Fuck what they are saying, what a life!'
*From my PERSONAL NOTES
38 - Movies and Midterms
Although it may seem fun to lock ourselves up in rooms and starting memorizing everything from the past couple of months, that also of five subjects or so, all the while feeling buoyant of not having studied yet still confident enough to clear every exam by memorizing, not studying, everything in couple of days only. But you know what is more fun? Focusing on the lecture in class and getting all you studying done there and having a great time on the exam-holidays by watching everything that you wanted to watch.
39 - The Centipede and The Tortoise
Not my anecdote, but the lesson of this illustrative story resonates highly with me. With about a hundred legs, centipede of our story is famous for its dancing moves. But the tortoise cannot digest the popularity of centipede and writes him a witty letter whereby he asks him what his dance moves are: does the 31st leg go up first, or 73rd moves up the last? The centipede of course doesn't know but now after reading the letter starts thinking about it and the next time he comes out to dance, he is just stuck in his head. Tortoise made the centipede self-aware and his performance dropped. In this instance, I think the ignorance of one's abilities or greatness is not only a bliss but vital.
40 - Snowfall in Adulthood
Snowfall, where I live, is a much desired and utterly merry event. But as I've come to grow up, unfortunately, I've come to realize that snowfalls aren't as innocent, worry-free, joyful as they were in childhood. Now, everyone has got their own plans, and those who don't hesitate to contact others for a fun trip, or you are so unhappy from the inside that even snow cannot cheer you up. For the first time in my life, I took a lonely walk on the white and cold roads of my hometown during a snowfall. Welcome to adulthood. And then of course follows the dirty and slippery roads in the aftermath, as well as cleaning the roofs, which as adults we care about way more than as children we did.
*From PODCASTS
41 - Krista Tippett on Tim Ferriss Show
Although by the time of listening to this episode I had already become a regular listener of the 'Tim Ferriss Show' (a great guy and a great podcast), this episode introduced me to another podcaster Krista Tippett: a warm, wise, and compassionate lady whose insights and calmness of communication pour out essential and staying pieces of life lessons into you. I just learned more about myself through this podcast.
42 - Gabor Mate on Tim Ferriss Show
A well-reknowned psychologist, Gabor Mate, not only challenges the listeners to confront with their inner selves, but also with Ferriss himself - even to the point where it gets uncomfortable. Although I don't remember much from this episode, time for a re-listen, I remember that I loved Winnie the Pooh even more after listening to it and came across a much admired classic 'Don Quixote' which I am very eager to read.
43 - Healing a wound in an appropariate setting from 'Modern Love'
I loved this podcast. A beautiful, honest, and insightful essay about how one relationship ended and brought quiet havoc in a doctor's life and how he healed through that pain by healing others. Narrated by famous actors, this podcast is a collection of essays from NYtimes about love in our modern world. It taught me the importance of fights in a relationship.
*From POEMS
How incredibly close we all once were: the living the non-living, the existing the non-existing - all just one singularity. Now, the loneliness, the medicines, the spaces between us. Highly imaginative and beautifully written.
'The world asks of only the strength we have and we give it; then it asks for more and we give it.' Wow! The goosebumps and the shower that my heart receives of love and admiration by reading these last lines of an incredible poem is a testament of how powerful and vital poems can be.
A beautiful, tender, and paying poem from a loved daughter to the generosity and wonder of a mother - all mothers. This poem brought tears to my eyes by giving words to my silent love for my mom.
I didn't know a poem could be so wise, consoling, beautiful yet utterly sad at the same time. 'Blown from the dark hills hither to my door, three flakes then four, arrive then many more.' A poem as cold-feeling as its words.
*From 'OTHERS'
Everyone, I mean everyone, needs to watch this TED talk. These 12 rules speak of life's most subtle and mattering aspects and we all should be aware of it. This talk will make your life easier. I promise.
Fun, insightful, and more fun. Gilbert investigates the three things that promise us happiness in life and comes to the conclusion that... Watch it for yourself, you'll love it.
An app that asks you for the most important of things you have on your phone: contacts, reminders, a puzzle game, a quote, and few more things and then arranges them neatly on an A4 size paper and asks you to print that. Now, turn off you phone and instead use you new 'Paper Phone'. A conceptually neat and workable concept. Challenge yourself as I did, and you'll be pleased.
