philosophy Archives - Kind-of-Lost

“Set for Life” by Scott Trench: Book Review

“Set for Life” by Scott Trench is one of those books that’s more useful in your late twenties than your late thirties, which isn’t a knock — it’s just the honest audience. Trench built his framework from his own experience going from broke recent grad to financially independent relatively quickly, and the whole book is oriented around aggressive early-stage wealth-building. If you’re past that stage, you’ll still find useful ideas, but the action items are most relevant when you’re starting from zero.

The Story of the Mexican Fisherman

Have you heard the story of the Mexican fisherman? If not, allow me to introduce you to a tale that is sure to leave you feeling inspired and contemplative.

“The hedgehog and the fox”, a witty take

Isaiah Berlin’s essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox” has been a source of intellectual curiosity and amusement since its publication in 1953. Berlin, a British philosopher and historian of ideas, was inspired by a fragment of poetry from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Berlin used this fragment to classify writers and thinkers into two broad categories: hedgehogs, who see the world through the lens of a single idea or principle, and foxes, who have multiple viewpoints and are not constrained by a single ideology.

“Chop wood carry water” meaning — the Zen phrase explained

I’ve been thinking about this phrase for years. “Chop wood carry water.” It sounds almost too simple — like advice on a refrigerator magnet — but the more you sit with it, the more it actually holds up. It came out of Zen Buddhism and it’s been bouncing around Western self-help circles long enough to feel clichéd by now. But the core idea is genuinely useful, and I think it gets mangled in translation more often than not.

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Two lessons from Diego Maradona’s life

Maradona died a few days ago and I was surprised by how sad the news made me. He was the best soccer player of his generation, and then some. One of the best ever, if not the best.

He had a long career on and off the field and many ups and downs in both. He ran into trouble several times because he was a rebel and disliked authority very much (hmm I just discovered one thing we had in common). I am not a soccer expert (heck, I am not an expert at anything, I am kind of lost after all) but I drew two lessons from all the memories I just reminisced about in the last couple of days and all the comments I heard and read.