Excellence field notes - November 2025
A thought
We recently returned from an amazing 20th college reunion. It was wonderful to see both the close friends that I remain in regular contact with, but also the friends where it has been awhile. Remembering old stories, hearing life updates, and marveling at everyone’s children, it was heart warming to be with this group.
Following these moments of chest expanding joy, I (and maybe we) want to do something to capture and preserve the moment.
Don’t we want our everyday lives to be changed by these mountain top experiences?
Or differently, aren’t we changed enough by these experiences that it feels like our day to day should be impacted after we return?
A quote
“When I genuinely admire someone with courage [or any characteristic] superior to my own, I affirm it as admirable, I rejoice to see it instantiated in the world, and I desire to possess it myself in my own way.
I do not envy them: I neither feel diminished in their presence nor strive to achieve superiority over them.
I strive for courage like theirs; not to keep up with them or exceed them but to become a better version of myself in becoming like them.”
The Cost of Ambition by Miroslav Volf
A book I’m reading
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth
“In Against the Machine, “furiously gifted” (The Washington Post) novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth presents a wholly original—and terrifying—account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us.
With masterful insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of progress, has choked Western civilization, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image. From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, he shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game—and how your very soul is at stake.”