Pain Has a Limit

Mother's Day is the biggest celebration my family has all year. It is a weekend full of campfires, cribbage, badminton, cornhole, and wayyyy too many frosting covered fudge brownies and macadamia nut cookies. It's quite easy to "just one more" yourself into a sugar induced fog state. If this email sounds loopy, just be thankful I didn't enter a coma.

With that, my appreciation goes out to all you mothers out there. I personally would be an absolute menace to society without my dear, wonderful mom.

Update

No travels yet! I know, I know. I'm disappointed too. But we may or may not have tickets booked for our next trip. Details coming soon. 😏

The Limits of Pain

I read a book a few years ago called War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. In it, a passage struck me. For context, the main character Pierre had just been imprisoned by the French in Moscow and was marching in the cold for weeks when he had an epiphany,

"He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom"

In other words, sure it's sad that there's no perfect happiness, but at least there's no perfect unhappiness. How amazing is that?! It seems that we have a biological limit to prevent infinite suffering. Can you imagine the alternative? What if the pain could just keep increasing and increasing and increasing until we implode with pressure? No, thank you.

This idea has brought me a deep sense of security in chasing discomfort in life. After all, how bad can it really get? For example, there was a train ride in India that I would not call a particularly pleasant experience. I cut my finger open. I dropped my jacket in urine. Dozens of taxi drivers hounded us at our destination after I was not in the mood for social interaction. (Reyka can attest to my sour mood)

But, as uncomfortable as that train ride was, I felt secure knowing that I could not feel infinitely bad. There was a limit to the amount of bummed, worried, or angry I could get that day.

Side note: I do NOT say this next recommendation lightly. War and Peace is probably the best book I have ever read to understand people and the world. It's a brick of a book, clocking in at over 1000 pages with tiny font, but absolutely worth every minute spent chugging through it. The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation is probably the best, and with a Kindle any paragraphs in French can be understood easily by clicking to the footnotes.

In case you wanted to watch, here's our newest video of our CRAZY INDIAN TRAIN EXPERIENCE (Agra to Jaipur)

Anyways, thinking about Mother's Day, here's a question for you: are there any international celebrations/holidays that you want to visit around the world? Oktoberfest in Germany, Holi in India, St. Patrick's day in Ireland, Day of the Dead in Mexico and Christmas in New York City are all on my list. How about you?

Tell me about it by replying to this email 😄. We love hearing from you!

Have a great week!

Wyatt (and Reyka)

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