Hey Big Thinkers,
Tomorrow everything will go impossibly well. You’ll wake 3 seconds before the alarm, deliciously rested from smooth REM cycles and unconfusing dreams. On your morning drive, the highway herd of rush-hour drivers will make space for you to merge, friendly hands gesturing after you! You’ll flip on the TV news to see ceasefires, a booming economy, and political pundits frozen speechless after realizing they’ve got nothing to yell about today. You’ll then arrive home to find the IRS mailed you a handwritten letter: “Let’s forget about your whole ‘back tax’ thing — our bad.”
This is, of course, a delusion. We all have expectations of how the world should be, but reality will never match them, no matter how reasonable our vision seems. When you stare into the gap between expectations and cold reality, you might feel nothing but melancholy. The Germans have a word for this: weltschmerz.
What do you do with weltschmerz? That’s what Big Think’s Kevin Dickinson explores this week, tracing the idea’s origins and offering actionable advice on how to turn melancholy into something less doomy and more inspiring.
Onward,
Stephen |
No comments:
Post a Comment