Why You Might Need an Adventure

If you find yourself a bit “grim about the mouth” like Ishmael, you don’t necessarily need to risk your life chasing an enraged sperm whale around the world. But you don’t have to accommodate your melancholy, either. I can suggest two approaches that you can employ right away to take on your hypos.

The first strategy is to use that narrative device ... See more

A common mistake is not to be Ishmael but Captain Ahab. Ahab—the doomed skipper of the Pequod, the whaling ship whose crew Ishmael joined—was singularly consumed with finding and killing Moby Dick, the great white whale. The days leading up to Ahab’s fateful encounter with the great whale were a fever dream singularly focused on the object of his o... See more

People derive a lot more happiness from high-skill activities that require learning than they do from low-skill ones that don’t, yet we typically settle for the latter. In other words, you will probably be much happier reading about philosophy or science than you will if you just scroll social media—so why are you still scrolling? The obvious answe... See more