5 Quick Things #327 💪

phone-free teens, getting in the arena, buying a bookstore, & loving what lasts

Hey there,

This week I’ve been thinking about the “loneliness epidemic,” the crisis we keep hearing about in our modern culture. I don’t have enough time or space here to unpack all my thoughts on the matter, but I will say I think we all know what this means because, deep down and maybe in just a small way, we know personally what this is. In Made For People, Justin Whitmel Earley describes loneliness as “the ache for something you used to have. Often an ache you cannot even name.”

I have been there in spades over the years, but I’m grateful that, right now anyway, I don’t seem to be in a season of loneliness. Why not? It’s definitely not because I’m a people magnet, hard-core introvert that I am. …The only real reason, and I’m not being hyperbolic here, is because I walked into the arena. That’s it. In my neighborhood, my parish, in the new thing we’re building in our area, with old friends, and in meeting new, the only common thread has been my willingness to get out there and get dirty and hurt.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

If you’re feeling lonely… Get in the arena. Make the first move. Invite people to coffee. Start a book club in your neighborhood. Be the friend to someone else you wish you had for yourself. Yes, you may get hurt. Strive valiantly for friendships. We’re made for them.

Spectators in the Arena at Arles, by Vincent van Gogh (1888) #

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5 Quick Things ☕️

1. New episode of A Drink With a Friend! In this one I’m introducing the next theme in this season’s series: making things. Why do we need to make things? I believe we need to be people who make things (more than we need things that are made by us) — and the reason is simple: because making things makes us more into who we’re meant to be. We’re made to make.

2. You might have missed this because it’s part of an opt-in only (but free!) series, but earlier this week I published the next installment of my ongoing series unpacking why I became Catholic after a lifetime of Protestantism: “‘Yep,’ he said. ‘The Church does have a lot to say about how we should live.’ ...This bothered my Americanized autonomous streak six ways to Sunday. So much of my personality was wrapped up in individualism, a you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do trait that I nearly wore as a badge of honor...I really had to grapple with the idea of submitting to a tradition that wanted its tentacles in the day-to-day of how I lived my life.”

3. Can you raise a teen today without a smartphone? I believe the answer is ‘yes,’ seeing as we’re currently raising two smartphone-less adolescents (and we have no intention of ever buying them one) …I wish we’d done the same with our oldest kiddo.

Melanie Hempe

shares her story of raising her now 18-year-old daughter without ever buying her one — spoiler alert: both she and her daughter are happy about it. “[My daughter] confidently told a group of moms recently that she loved her family when asked if she ‘hated her parents’ for not allowing her to have a smartphone. Fear of your child not liking you is never a sound basis for any parenting decision.”

4. Joshua Gibbs on

Autumn Kern

’s podcast? Yes, please. Joshua is one of those writers I’ll read anything he publishes, and his latest book, Love What Lasts, is arguably his best¹. He does a great job unpacking the difference between common, uncommon, and mediocre stories and media, and makes a solid case as to why smartphones are more like meth than chocolate cake (in case you need yet another reason not to give one to your kid). Great conversation here.

5. And finally,

Shawn Smucker

and

Maile Silva

have bought a bookstore! I absolutely cannot wait to see it in person (especially because I’ve done more than my fair share of scouting out potential locations for a used bookstore in my own town square). Shawn got me in all the feels with this parting thought: “Twenty years from now I’ll be 67. There will be a young person nearing thirty years old. They're looking around their house and stumble on an old copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It’s worn, cover faded. They pick it up and start reading it, and the story takes them back to when they were just a kid, and someone recommended this book to them. It was in that moment that they fell in love with reading and books and words and stories. Then they remember, for the first time in a while, that they first came across that book in a little bookstore in Lancaster, a place called Nooks, a place their mom or dad used to take them when they needed a break, or a breather, or a good book. This is our dream now.”

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Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📺

35 Years of Music, Remixed Year By Year (I revisit this about once a year… the work this must have taken is staggering — also, 1986’s is consistently my favorite, if you’re curious)

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Quotable 💬

“A good life is forged from precisely the things that make it hard.”

-Robert Waldinger

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In your current neck of the woods, when is the day's high roughly 75 degrees F (24 degrees C)? 🌤️

I asked this because I have a longstanding theory that most of us love the same general temp of 75 degrees, but we call it different things depending on our location. I could never understand why people up north loved summer …until we moved up north.

In Central Texas, 75 degrees is a beautiful early spring or late autumn day (yesterday’s high was already 90… womp womp).

• Spring 56.8%

• Summer 28.8%

• Autumn 10.1%

• Winter 4.3%

Find this week’s poll here.

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Quick Links 🔗

• 📐Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

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Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What are you going to make this weekend?

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Have a good weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. Photos for perfectionists.

1. Here he is on Drink last year.