Review & Rating 8/10:
A short book to sit and think about the important questions in life. The two major questions being: Who am I? What is my nature?

What makes the book so powerful is Palmer’s description of what transpired in his mind as he made the various decisions in his life. He had a PhD and he was on the board of trustees of a university and there were expectations he would even the president of it. Palmer shares how he had desires for fame and to be known and everything his ego wanted. Things I can definitely feel myself relating with. But he makes the decision to go to teach at Pendle Hill and be a Quaker and just the anguish and strain one goes through mentally from talks of “unmet potential” or “throwing away opportunity” etc… It gives one perspective to their own journey.

Everyone walks a unique path and this book is one more tool to help the reader feel slightly more comfortable in their own skin. At least, this was the case for me.

To give a sense of the big a-ha moments, here are a few quotes that were mic drop moments for me when I read it:
“We must take the no of the way that closes and find the guidance it has to offer - and take the yes of the way that opens and respond with the yes of our lives.”

“I can tell you what I did to survive and, eventually, to thrive - but I cannot tell you why I was able to do those things before it was too late.”


Book Notes:
Given our lives are experiments with truths, the negative results are just as important for success (i.e. figuring out dislikes). Sometimes, figuring out what you don’t like, what you shouldn’t do and what is bad for you is just easier to deal with because you know you should avoid it.

A vocation is a gift to be received. Not something to be achieved. Something to be embraced after coming to understand the self. The thing is….such truth might be even harder to accept than merely pretending to be someone else.

One’s desires are clues that need to be deciphered to understand the self.

The question isn’t “What ought to do with my life?” but rather “Who am I?” and “What is my nature?” If you seek to answer the latter questions, how to spent the time will become clearer.

“But before we come to that centre, full of light, we must travel in the dark. Darkness is not the whole of the story - every pilgrimage has passages of loveliness and joy - but it is the part of the story most often left untold. When we finally escape the darkness and stumble into the light, it is tempting to tell others that our hope never flagged, to deny those long nights we spent cowering in fear.” / Never ignore the darkness in our journey.

To realize one’s vocation, one must listen to the body. A sensation for what one is meant to do with their nature rather than what they think they should do, which can often be the ego. A sign you are doing your vocation is that the act feels native to you. Like a perfect glove.

A vocation is something you cannot not do. It’s not something you are so excited by with butterflies in the stomach. It’s something where you don’t know why and there isn’t some rational explanation for it but you just know deep down in the self that this is something you have to do.

Examine the self in each setting. It reminds me of why I probably wouldn’t be a great institutional investor. I was never going to be as obsessed about companies or obsessed about the numbers as my coworkers. When you watch people do something so obsessively, you know what you are not. Sometimes this can be a bitter pill to swallow but it’s important to really know one’s nature and its limitations. Much like one’s circle of competence in investing.

All advice and opinions net out to zero. So who cares what preconceived notions people have of any profession? They aren’t you and they don’t care for your nature.

Don’t put any weight on age. Don’t let notions of what arbitrary numbers of age determine what is fitting and what one can or cannot do. Even ignoring it is probably better because it will only limit you to plug it in as an input. Being mindful of age only makes you impatient.

Failure is how we learn about our limits. Heed them well. Sometimes, it’s valuable to take ‘no’ for an answer and iterate from said limitation of the self. Sometimes, the world does you a favour by rejecting you early….but you are stubborn and finally get your way with a job or something of the sort and it’s only when you see it through that you realize it was not your vocation and you leave.

Even if what you hope to do may seem noble externally, if it doesn’t match your nature…it will lead to adverse consequences for the self. It’s something one cannot escape from.

“Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself…..Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward.”

Strength in one area will lead to a weakness in another. There are always tradeoffs. Know the potholes in the soul not to fill them but to avoid falling into them. Very important.

Remember that a closed door only stops you from entering one room but opens up the rest of the world to you. Don’t lament the one room you couldn’t get into. Embrace the rejections and failures. Stop pounding the closed door but turnaround.

“We must take the no of the way that closes and find the guidance it has to offer - and take the yes of the way that opens and respond with the yes of our lives.”

“I can tell you what I did to survive and, eventually, to thrive - but I cannot tell you why I was able to do those things before it was too late.” / oh fuck this is amazing. Life is more art than science. There is no precision.

Depression is the disconnection between the self-image and the public mask. It makes sense that those who traverse on the journey of self-examination should feel this and this should be the signal to pay attention to that one needs to connect the two. To alter the public mask to fit the self-image. One’s nature will not change, hence the public personna must move towards it.

Never try to “fix” something for the depressed. The best thing to do is to stand there with them. Beside them. To feel powerless and useless because that’s exactly how the depressed person feels. So now maybe you can start to understand a little of what that person must be experiencing.

Giving advice sets the one who advises free. Not the one he advises.

“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done… you are fierce with reality.” - Florida Scott Maxwell

Anything done to discover the true self serve the true self is the genuine path to helping others.

“…the salvation of the human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human modesty, and in human responsibility.” - Vaclav Havel

Look within. It’s easy to find an external enemy in the world but the real enemy resides in the self. One cannot criticize the world without doing the work within and if one is successful in the latter the former is bound to not happen.

Is my extroversion how I cope with self doubt? At times. It’s important to look inward to see if we are insecure about our identity and why that is so. Many times, we identify with external roles and that is a cheap use of one’s identity.

Life is neither a battlefield or game of chance. It’s something far richer and promising. If you believe it to be a battlefield or a game of chance, then it will conform around that belief.

A mindset of scarcity will lead to such an eventuality. Jealousy towards a lover will push her away, hoarding money will lead to it going away, etc...