A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor – Hank Green

Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book. Like its prequel, it took me a while for me to get into it, but by the time I was a third of the way in, I could barely put it down. There were a significant handful of passages that really made me think, just a few of which I made note of below. I appreciated how different insights were more meaningful coming from the appropriate character (while at the same time, all of them sound very natural in the voice of Hank Green).

(The notes below are not a summary of the book, but rather raw notes - whatever I thought, at the time, might be worth remembering. I read this as an e-book, so take page numbers with a grain of salt!)

Green, Hank. 2020. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. Dutton.

• 72, in the voice of Andy: “You watch four different videos, trying to keep all of them in your head at once, and then out flops an idea that looks and feels fresh and new. When I knew I was going to have to say something useful soon, I watched a LOT of videos.” j: this is a good reminder to watch a lot of commentaries on issues I care about, from a variety of sources, even those that I mostly don’t agree with.
• 296, in the voice of Miranda: “We’ve got two competing ideas inside of our heads: first, that all people have the same value because otherwise we’re immoral monsters, and then second, that some people are more valuable because they have access to more money or skills or knowledge. I’m not saying this is good; I’m just saying it’s a thing.”
• 417, in the voice of April: One of the forces that drives people to act in the world is want, which everyone has to some degree. “…The most amazing tool that I think anyone in the world can have is the ability to control and direct that want. ¶ Some people work to minimize it with mindfulness and meditation; some people let it grow and run free and take over their lives. But some people, and I consider myself one of them, study their want, refine it, and build an engine that burns it. Even if their want pushes all in one direction, they can tack against it like a sailboat, getting somewhere better than where they wanted to be. ¶ I know my want. I know that big well inside of me is never going to get filled. I know that life is not about actually satisfying the want; it’s about using it.”