Thoreau chose a life deliberate. Frost chose a road of intention. Faulkner lived a life unchosen. Their journeys may not have the same ends but, just as history may not repeat itself, there's a rhyme.
This connected everything kind of life...it rhymes. This human experience is not over. We are not robbed any more than the person who pays for a game of chance in an alley. Find the cup with the ball. Let's do that together.
Seneca's vindica te tibi rings out. An admonishment for us to claim ourselves back, to own ourselves, to take possession of ourselves. The Latin punches through history, it calls out to us to live deliberately, to choose roads less travelled, to embrace the unchosen parts of life. This is the Vocare — a summons to the deliberate and the intentional. Whether or not we get the opportunity to choose our lives, we embark on the journey and develop the analog skills of a cartographer. Wayfinding is hard, and in some cases seemingly impossible. Again, let's do that together.
Thoreau borrowed an axe. Frost hiked a trail. Faulkner navigated the less-than-still rivers, those unchosen obstacles of his life. We can too. That's why we have the experiments — self-directed steps of experience. Claimed for ourselves. Taken in possession. Volition. Deliberate. Intentional.
Each experiment belongs to one of four fields of inquiry. Select a category to explore.
Spend the last waking hour of your day without a screen. Anything else is allowed — a book, a walk, a window, the dog. Keep one small note about what changed.
Two hundred and forty readers are eight weeks in. We are gathering their observations — what loosened, what got harder, what surprised them — and we will publish the dispatch when the season is done. There is still time to start.
Join the experiment. New dispatches arrive when they're ready.
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