Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who has joined this newsletter. When you launch a project into the world, you have no idea if anyone will respond. I’ve been really touched by all the comments, messages, voice notes, and emails. It means the world.
So far, this has been sent to friends, family, and serendipitous cafe connections (new friends).
A few people have asked me if they can share these articles more widely: with friends, work mates and broader networks. The answer is: I would love you to.
My longer-term ambition is to find an audience beyond immediate friends and family. This newsletter is an open invitation to all curious souls.
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How this newsletter will work
I’m actively figuring this out as we go.
I’m mainly here as a writer but Substack is a unique platform — text, audio, video — and I’m open to experimenting.
I’ll send it on Sunday. Once a week, to begin with - maybe once a fortnight after that.
Some pieces will be self-contained like the first two (Life is And and The World-Weary Man in Search of His Ba).
Other pieces will be more curatorial, like the one below. The idea here is to share with you some of my favourite writing from around the web.
I’m always on the lookout for thoughtful, thought-provoking and nourishing reads, and I’m really excited to share some brilliant writing with you. If you have any suggestions I’d love hear them.
This week, I want to share three perspectives on a theme: “The Inner Game”.
We often hear the phrase, “a rich inner life.” But what does it mean? Does it matter? And how might we cultivate it?
1.) “As we shovel in distractions, the inner world grows dim”
I loved this piece from the wonderful Australian novelist
. The article, in the Sydney Morning Herald, is flagged with the warning, “this article was published four years ago,” as though it were redundant. And although the pandemic feels like a different historical age, the wisdom here is timeless.Wood calls us to slow down, embrace voluntary simplicity, and make room for cultivating a rich inner life. She draws an analogy between cultivating a garden and cultivating the mind. Both of which can prosper, and rot.
It’s not just the garden that’s in desperate need of repair; it’s me. Or my spirit. What might be called my inner life is, like the space before me, half dead, fragmented, mouldy in some parts, dried out in others. Unbalanced, undernourished, filled with dispiriting mess …
…of course it’s not only artists who live rich inner lives. If you attend thoughtfully to your personal domain – your interests and surroundings, the people you love, your work – you will quite naturally have a substantial interior world. And while your inner life and mine might be very different, I’d posit that when they’re at their best, they might share some common elements.
First, perhaps, is a purposeful attentiveness to the concept of the mind itself as something of value, to be cared for and exercised, fed and challenged. The mind is a place of great freedom, not to be damaged or filled with rubbish; a place that with effort can be made – like a garden – peaceful yet full of movement, wild but safe at the same time.
When I shared this with Mum, she said, “gardening doesn’t cultivate my mind, let me tell you. The leaves blow into the pool, I have to scoop them out, my back is killing me — I hate it.”
Point taken.
2.) The Inner Game of Tennis, reviewed and recommended by Bill Gates
It’s easy to dismiss this book from the title alone. But for every review that says, “this book has helped me overcome my anxiety about serving and specifically my ball toss,” ten other reviews focus on broader life lessons. The title of Bill Gates’ review is The best guide to getting out of your own way: a profound book about tennis and much more.
Beyond Microsoft, Gates is a voracious reader (regularly reading hundreds of books per year).
The Inner Game of Tennis is one of his favourites, and it has helped him manage a company valued at 3 trillion dollars.
Gallwey acknowledged the importance of the outer game, but what he was really interested in, and what he thought was missing from most people’s approach, was the inner game. “This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player,” he wrote. Unlike the outer game, where your opponent is the person on the other side of the net, the inner game “is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt, and self-condemnation. In short, it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.
3.) Do Not Despise Your Inner World: Advice on a Full Life from Philosopher Martha Nussbaum
Maria Popova’s blog, The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), is my favourite corner of the internet, like sitting by a quiet river.
Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer… Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of gossip, the latest opportunity for self-assertion and status. But we all begin our lives as helpless babies, dependent on others for comfort, food, and survival itself. And even though we develop a degree of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever we are able to achieve. As we grow, we all develop a wide range of emotions responding to this predicament: fear that bad things will happen and that we will be powerless to ward them off; love for those who help and support us; grief when a loved one is lost; hope for good things in the future; anger when someone else damages something we care about. Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger. But for that very reason we are often ashamed of our emotions, and of the relations of need and dependency bound up with them.
Next Sunday’s newsletter:
The Least Understood Concept in Character: What Does It Mean to be Multi-Dimensional?
At one level, this is about the craft of writing complex characters. At a deeper level, I hope, it’s an insight into human nature. A way of seeing ourselves and those around us in more than one dimension.
Thanks for being here.
Sam
I love the “do not despise your inner world” piece. It is very true that people are often ashamed of their emotions 😢 I had a recent experience when we arrived at our first stop in Zambia to be greeted by a giraffe 🦒 at the entrance to our hotel. It was unexpected and brought me to tears. Emotions are often beyond our control, it comes from being human. Not all bad as it turns out
I loved this piece Sam. I have copied the garden line out by hand and will look at it every day for a wee while, as it chimes fully with the work I'm being guided towards by therapy and is the most powerful metaphor I've come across to help me embrace that work rather than shrink from it. The irony being that reading this piece has, alongside spurring me on towards that work, also made it harder to do, because I'm supposed to be finding time to sit in stillness / silence with my inner world, and now all I want to do is read everything by or about Martha Nussbaum, and dig out some Charlotte Wood novels for dessert (but inner contradictions are why we're here I suppose ;D)