If you want to live a quiet life, live a quiet life.

Seven things my father taught me, by example.

My father, in the pipe-smoking 1950s

Thanks to all who came out for our Candlelight Chat last Sunday with the glorious Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, on the topics of perfectionism, social anxiety, and Ellen’s latest book. The video replay—along with Ellen’s famous chart that shows you how to avoid counter-productive loops—will go out in a few days to paid and scholarship subscribers - please stay tuned!

Today is the fourth anniversary of my father’s death. In his honor, I’d like to do my annual share of these seven things that he taught me by example.

1. Do beautiful things, just for the sake of them. If you love orchids, build a greenhouse full of them in the basement. If you love the sound of French, learn to speak it fluently, even though you rarely have time to visit France. If you love organic chemistry, spend your Sundays reading “orgo” textbooks.​ My father pursued these passions, and many others besides (stamp-collecting, classical music, the list goes on).

2. Find work you love and work that matters, and do it as excellently as you can.​

3. Make a life where you’re as free as possible from the forces of dogma and bureaucracy.​

4. If you want to live a quiet life, live a quiet life. If you’re a humble person who has no use for the spotlight, be a humble person who has no use for the spotlight. No big deal.​ (I got the tendency to march to my own drummer, from my father. On many subjects he would shrug his shoulders, with no fanfare, and go his own way.)

5. If you happen to be a doctor, take care of your patients – really take care of them. Study medical journals after dinner, train the next generation of physicians (my father kept teaching until age 81), spend the extra hour to visit the bedside of your patients in the hospital.​ (Here’s a letter from one of those patients, which we found after my father passed away. He never showed us these things while he was alive.)

   

6. If you’re a husband, take care of your wife, even when she has Alzheimer’s and can’t walk and asks you the same question again and again and again and again and again and again…​

7. If you’re a parent, teach your children the things you love, like music and poetry, so that one day they’ll love them too. One of my earliest memories is asking my father to play the “chair record” (Beethoven’s “Emperor’s” concerto, whose name I was too young to pronounce) over and over again.

My father and I talked, just before he died of COVID. He was in the hospital, trying to breathe.

“Be well, kid,” he said, as he hung up the phone.

And I have been well. And so, I hope, will you.

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What are some of the most important things your parents or other guides have taught you, or that you hope to teach other people?

If you’d like to share your thoughts below, or share this Kindred Letter with a friend, you can do those things here.