Lifelong Commitment
Savvy Saturdays - 7/11/20
Hello friends,
Greetings from Dallas!
Last week’s 4th of July was crazy. 🎆
I went to a Costco parking lot in Pflugerville, TX with several friends to watch some bomb fireworks. (pictures below cred to said friends)
Funnily enough, I was attempting to finish up last week’s update on my laptop while waiting for the official fireworks to start, but unfortunately, the mobile hotspot was not wanting to cooperate. All I needed to do was write down a quote and paste in a picture, and I’d be done, but my hotspot was too slow and wouldn’t allow me to save or send out the update. 😅
I ended up having to go through an arduous process on my phone to find and download the photo so I could send out the update.
Anyways, there were a lot of pre-fireworks, lit by the citizens of Texas, but the main show was amazing to view. My favorite were the ones that gave off a premature boom before brilliantly lighting up the sky with many colors and fading away with many sparkles. ✨
As they say, variety is the spice of life.
Afterward, we went downtown to Auditorium Shores to walk along the rich green park. The firework party didn’t seem to stop as we saw lights flash right next to buildings right above the waters. We could even hear the police sirens echoing throughout the city after the first firework was shot. 🚓
Besides the craziness of things, personally, it was fun being able to enjoy each other’s company, chilling and listening to throwback songs after a long week of work. 🎶
On a more personal note, several of my friends are getting married today! 💍
In fact, I’ll be going to one of their weddings this afternoon, which is why this update is being sent out so early (what a shocker, finally an update before 5 PM O.O)
It’s going to be crazy attending a wedding in person, as these events are considered a moderate-high level of risk in regards to COVID.
Fortunately, the wedding has listed several protocols, such as a 25% capacity, empty seats to space out people, and lots of hand sanitizers available, so we should be as safe as could be.🛡️
When I think of weddings, there’s a mixture of emotion - both joy, awe, as well as uncertainty.
In all the kdramas and lovestruck movies I’ve watched, I noticed a tendency to idealize the notion of meeting the perfect someone, falling in love, and after many impossible conflicts, end up together for the rest of eternity.
Marriage seems to be a beautiful spotlight - the end goal of all relationships.
But when I think of the reality of marriage, the percentage of divorces rising in the U.S. as well as the statistic that marriage is happening later and later due to career, financial, or emotional barriers, I feel that there is a greater weight to the idea of “till death do us part”.
What is called for is not just an agreement or contract, but a covenant.
This is best captured in the way God loved the church.
Every time God’s chosen people failed, or Israel chose to go against God’s will; though He had every right to wipe them out, He chose to forgive and redeem his people.
Rather than being conditional, He was unconditional.
That is the weight and beauty of marriage - to imitate God’s unconditional love for us in the form of a union between man and woman.
A lifelong commitment of love and grace to another. 💒
“He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations”
—Psalm 105:8 ESV
Thanks for checking on this update! It’s always a blessing to share from my life and my thoughts with y’all.
If y’all need any prayer, please feel free to reach out to me and I’d love to lift y’all up in prayer. With that, stay safe, keep it savvy, and I’ll see y’all in the next update 😊
Weekly Collections
Entrepreneurship
—How Big Tech Makes Their Billions
Productivity
“Success largely boils down to a simple distinction. It’s glaringly obvious once you see it, but also easy to find ingenious ways of ignoring it:
Do the real thing and stop doing fake alternatives.
The fact that a direct strike on a problem often works better than an oblique attack isn’t surprising. But the problem is even more acute than most people would expect.
When you examine case studies of people who have had major accomplishments, you expect there to be some trick or shortcut. Some amazing technique they used that others weren’t clever enough to recognize.
More often, however, the strategy used is dead simple: doing the real thing.
Real things require real difficulty. Fake stuff never does.
This doesn’t mean fake work is effortless. Instead, pretend activity always has just enough difficulty to allow you to trick yourself into thinking you’re doing something that matters. But, conveniently, it avoids any of the truly difficult things the real situation would create.
Days wasted on fake activity may keep you busy, but they never seem to go anywhere. A life spent on real work may not always be the easiest or most entertaining, but it’s the one that adds up in the end.”
Rules for doing the Real Thing
Nothing is often better than something.
The hard way is the easy way.
If you’re not sure what the real thing is, just ask.
Weekly Reflections
Mental Model
“The narrative fallacy leads us to see events as stories, with logical chains of cause and effect. Stories help us make sense of the world. However, if we’re not aware of the narrative fallacy it can lead us to believe we understand the world more than we really do.
How to apply the mental model:
The first step, clearly, is to become aware of the problem. Once we understand our brain’s craving for narrative, we begin to see narratives every day, all the time, especially as we consume news.
A second way we can circumvent narrative is to simply avoid or reinterpret sources of information most subject to the bias. Turn the TV news off. Stop reading so many newspapers. Be skeptical of biographies, memoirs, and personal histories. Be careful of writers who are incredibly talented at painting a narrative, but claim to be writing facts.
Lastly, the final prescription comes from Taleb himself; the progenitor of the idea of our problem with narrative.
When searching for real truth:
Favor experimentation over storytelling (data over anecdote)
Favor experience over history (which can be cherry-picked)
Favor clinical knowledge over grand theories.
Figure out what you know and what’s a guess, and become humble about your understanding of the past.”
Verse of the Week
"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.
For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
—2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Challenging Quote
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world.”
—Anne Frank
If you guys have found the newsletter to be helpful, I would love to hear from you on what’s been good, any suggestions for improvement, and anything else you’d like to see!
Please don’t be shy to let me know and thanks in advance!