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In this week’s issue:

• Recommended Reads: the importance of gratitude, John Cheever's 'Why I Write Short Stories', and why walking helps us think
• Quotes & Musings: John Cheever on the short story form

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Recommended Reads

​Use Gratitude to Counter Stress and Uncertainty (HBR)

This article was written during the peak of pandemic lockdowns, but its message resonates outside that period of isolation. The emphasis on gratitude is important, but it's also become cliche and its overuse often materializes as inauthentic. But there are real psychological and health benefits to practicing gratitude. It releases dopamine and serotonin, which makes us feel lighter and happier. It helps us shift perspective away from focusing on what we don't have to emphasizing what we do. That shift makes us more present and appreciative of what and who is around us. The author of the research states that we can't be both grateful and envious at the same time. They are incompatible. The simple act of gratitude nudges us to choose positive over negative emotions. My own practice takes place when I journal. And while I journal about a lot of different things, I always try to reflect on my appreciation for what I have. In particular I always try to give ample time and space to recognizing what and who is going well in my life. The latter consists of reflecting on the people who make me better, make my days richer. I come from a long family line of modesty that often bleeds into self-criticism. While I'll never stop close introspection or challenging myself to improve, I've found that even the smallest gratitude practice helps me be more focused on the things that matter and present with the people I care about. Like with any habit, consistency is key.

​Why I Write Short Stories (John Cheever)

"...so long as we are possessed by experience that is distinguished by its intensity and its episodic nature, we will have the short story in our literature..."

This short essay opens with a wonderful paragraph and then continues with a description of why Cheever, who published 121 short stories in The New Yorker and whose collected works total over 900 pages, found the short story to be such a compelling medium. That there's something not just about the window narrative fiction can provide us into the lives of other people but more generally through those stories it helps us make more sense of the world. Short stories, because of their brevity, are more consistently accessible to readers. They can be read anywhere too, as Cheever points out. But it's the quote shared above and near the end of this newsletter that illuminates the unique value of short fiction. The pace and 'episodic nature' of the short story (or flash fiction) allows the reader and the writer both to delight in the quirkiness but also the wisdom of small moments. These moments are often seen as too mundane in the grand scale and sprawl of a novel, but when they're stripped of the obligation of informing that larger, arcing story we remember that they are anything but mundane. Cheever narrates a scene about his neighbors in the essay. It's a short example of how that tool of writerly observation, in this instance, reveals two contrasting characters. Just because we don't want to read a novel about these two characters doesn't mean there isn't something special to behold.

​Why Walking Helps Us Think (The New Yorker)

One recurring theme in posts and articles I share here is about the creative power of walking. In some ways I link to these articles more than once because I myself need the reminder. Living in a new city and one that is eminently walkable I walk more now than I have in years past. And yet still I succumb to the modern fallacy of feeling constantly pulled toward a seat and my computer. There's always something to be done. But a brief walk -- one long enough to shake free the invisible shackles of imposed urgency -- has a way of resting and recharging the mind; making it more nimble and better capable of finishing that next task. The article highlights what's happening to our minds and bodies on those walks, and why a good stroll is essential to our well-being. Oxygen and blood flow faster and fuller through our bodies and our brains. Walking has a way of shifting our thoughts as it creates a natural rhythm where our body flows in unison with our meandering thoughts.

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Quotes & Observations

"A collection of short stories appears like a lemon in the cur- rent fiction list, which is indeed a garden of love, erotic horse- play and lewd and ancient family history; but so long as we are possessed by experience that is distinguished by its intensity and its episodic nature, we will have the short story in our literature, and without a literature we will, of course, perish. It was F. R. Leavis who said that literature is the first distinction of a civilized man."

-- John Cheever

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Next Sunday

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