News and Notes for January, 2023
Long form to read
Good piece from the New York Times giving a doctor’s perspective on living longer: As a Doctor, I See Aging Differently
Remember how much battlefield medicine advanced treatments? We can thank COVID-19 for the news that mRNA vaccines have reached a Stage II trial in battling cancer tumors! Worth reading through some of the technical bits here to understand what place these vaccines will take in treatment.
Quick Book Review
I am becoming more and more attracted to stoicism as I get older and this book does nothing to dissuade me from that. The Stoics understood what it meant to engage in discomfort and produce our best work for our whole lives: it’s well-aligned with Strong99. I read it front to back but the short, mostly independent chapters make it one that you could jump into again. Holiday has woven quotes and stories of both the Stoics and people from modernity that embody stoic virtues. At times he’s a cheerleader for us, at other times he asks us to do some real soul-searching. This book is part of a series (one for each of the 4 stoic virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation) but he is clear that moderation (discipline, self-control) is key for the others to work. Read it, ask yourself if you are embodying Temperance.
There is no better definition of the path of temperance. It’s an all-consuming, full-time thing.
It’s the journey of a lifetime, one that gets more impressive (and rewarding) the longer you stay at it.
— Discipline is Destiny, Ryan Holiday
On Loneliness later in life
I recently wrote on coping with loneliness and the subject has continued to appear. A recent piece from NPR on a group that celebrates centenarians points out how the biggest problem they face is loneliness.
In “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss Findings from the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey” they show a post-pandemic trend of more younger people losing touch with their friends. I learned of the concept of a “Third Place” from this reddit comment, describing the decay of social places outside of Home and Work.
I don’t present these as sad and depressing, rather in the context of Strong99: how can we navigate these social changes and still increase our social connections as we age?
A Year of Discomfort
Just finished my first week of engaging with discomfort once a day and I’ve already had some insights. So far I’m following a plan of trying to do 2 uncomfortable things per day so that if I fail at one there’s a backup to ensure conformance. This week it’s been “Eat Whole 30 with no snacks”, and “30+ seconds of cold showers” daily. So far I’ve done fairly well, to the point where I’m not sure I can class either activity as really uncomfortable anymore: that’s my signal to dive in deeper.
Other discomforts this week included:
extra squats with extra weight, a bar hang, and some short wind sprints at the gym
cut off my beard and saw a puffy, round face that wasn’t really “me”
engaged in an online group
in reading about stoicism I admitted to myself that I wasn’t really exercising agency or self-control over my life
I find myself asking if these things are truly uncomfortable. They’re certainly not “sat bare-naked in the snow for an hour with elevator music in my headphones” uncomfortable, but they are a start. And that’s what this is about, building a tolerance and addressing fear head-on.