The Atlantic

"In a life of busyness and ambushes on our attention, dog walks air out the brain. Sometimes they might seem like an inconvenience, but only in the way G. K. Chesterton defined 'inconvenience'—an adventure wrongly considered. Considered correctly, the daily dog walks are a regimen of escape and pause. They enlarge our sympathies and sweeten our disposition. They pry open the day when it balls up into a little fist," John Dickerson writes. (From 2021)

America’s Founders knew that the pursuit of happiness involved personal liberation, Arthur C. Brooks writes. https://lnkd.in/ejyZFWkS The Declaration of Independence asserts that there is an “unalienable right” to the “pursuit of happiness,” Brooks writes. “As a happiness specialist, I have always been puzzled by something about this early-American happiness advice … As wise as they were, the Founders were mixing up getting happier with minimizing the sources of unhappiness.” It’s fair to say that their philosophy was not about learning how to enjoy life, Brooks writes, but “about clearing away the self-imposed sources of misery that make pursuing happiness difficult or impossible.” The Founders believed that successful self-government relies on personal self-government, and in their writings, the Founders explained how one can go about it. First, curb your appetites. As Brooks interprets the advice from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, “Poor health due to excess and poverty from wasteful spending are avoidable sources of misery.” A second lesson to take from the Founders is the benefits of humility. “The Founders would definitely disapprove of our cult of self-esteem,” Brooks writes—and according to research, learning from others and acknowledging one’s limitations “strongly predicts lower levels of anxiety and depression.” Another piece of advice Brooks takes from the Founders is to avoid idleness. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote in 1787 that “a mind always employed is always happy.” There is a danger in overcompensating and making ourselves too busy, “but staying occupied with meaningful tasks is a guard against misery,” Brooks writes. Finally, shun the limelight. “Alexander Hamilton called the desire for recognition “the ruling passion of the noblest minds.” “But a miserable passion it is, leading to frustration,” Brooks notes. https://lnkd.in/ejyZFWkS 🎨:: Jan Buchczik

Arthur C. Brooks on the trap of staying on too long:

Many people chase achievement, assuming it will lead to well-being. They should reverse that order of operations, Arthur Brooks writes. (From 2022)

“A former teacher once told me that we reread books not to uncover something new in them but to see how we’ve changed,” Rose Horowitch writes in the Sunday Daily:

With chefs tossing in pig ear, tequila, and other wacky ingredients, when does a classic dish become something other than itself? Ellen Cushing writes: https://lnkd.in/eJ4kMBcX

AI-generated images of hypermasculine and shirtless Jesus Christ are suddenly everywhere on social media, Damon Beres writes in Atlantic Intelligence. “There is no escaping it, it seems.”

In most ways, Biden’s persistence has made for a resilient, healthy psyche, Franklin Foer writes. "Right now it is his psychological prison, a mental habit that might doom American democracy."

Long hours on the job can temporarily ease the symptoms of depression and anxiety. But you’re better off leaving the office and facing your feelings head-on. (From 2023)

When Ron Klain admitted to Elaina Plott Calabro last year that the White House could be working harder to elevate Kamala Harris’s profile, “he didn’t know that the Democratic Party, and perhaps American democracy itself, would soon be riding on her readiness to be president. But perhaps he should have,” Plott Calabro writes. https://lnkd.in/e2ruXyFF “Four months before the election, and one week after [Joe] Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, Harris’s capacity to lead the Democratic Party and the free world has never been more relevant. And yet many Americans, after three years of the West Wing’s poor stewardship of Harris, are now looking at their vice president as if for the first time,” Plott Calabro continues. In the course of reporting a profile of the vice president last year, Plott Calabro learned that Biden’s team did “not especially enjoy discussing whether Harris was prepared for the presidency—not so much because they had doubts about her ability to lead the country, it seemed, but because they resented the implication that there might soon come a time when she would have to.” Harris’s staggering unpopularity with voters is by no small measure of her own making: She has fumbled interviews, and her office was initially beset by dysfunction. But, Plott Calabro notes, she also hasn’t exactly been hiding. By fall of 2023, Harris had traveled to 19 foreign countries and met with 100 or so foreign leaders. One of the few officials in Washington who correctly intuited the salience of abortion for voters, she spent the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections crisscrossing the United States as the administration’s spokesperson on the issue. “She’s been out there, on the front lines of the campaign since it launched,” a former Harris adviser told Plott Calabro at the link in our bio. “It got more focus, and will get more focus, because of what happened with [Biden’s debate] performance.” 🎨:The Atlantic. Source: Drew Angerer / Getty.