Issue #16

Hey friends 👋🏽,

Welcome back to Thought Caffeine, a weekly newsletter where I share my favourite discoveries during the week.

I started rounds in psychiatry this week, but since Covid-19 cases are back on the rise, we're seeing more and more history taking being done with the use of telecommunication. On the reporting front, I'm surprised to see many psych referrals of patients with Covid-19 – with pathologies ranging from adjustment disorder to organic delirium.

📚 My favourite excerpt from The Prophet

Kahlil Gibran is a brilliant poet. His most famous work, The Prophet – a 26 prose poetry fable – is one of my favourite books to date. In it, there is one particular excerpt that spoke to my soul. 

Your children are not your children

They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you

You may give them your love but not your thoughts

For they have their own thoughts

You may house their bodies but not their souls

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far

Let your bending in with the archer's hand be for gladness

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable

I don’t have children yet, but it is with Kahlil’s sentiment that I will raise my future children.

🗣 The best conversations

Conversing with friends and meeting new people are two of my favourite pastimes, so much so that my friends and I created a coffee shop in campus to gather like-minded people and cerebrally engage over a cup of coffee. The pandemic of course took that freedom away from us.

Online means of communication I think will never be able to replicate the warmth of physical conversations. So when I came across this nugget from David Perell’s newsletter, I couldn’t help but reminisce better days.

The best conversations end in one of four ways:

1. Words: You explore so many new ideas that you no longer have the language to say what you want to say.
2. Metaphysics: You debate your values and base-level assumptions because they determine your conclusions.
3. Humor: Your cheeks are sore, your eyes are watering, and your stomach hurts from laughing so hard.
4. Creativity: You leave the conversation excited about a new idea and inspired to start working on it. 

🙂 Other things I've been enjoying

1. Book: Spark Joy by Marie Kondo. I thought it was too technical to enjoy. It felt more like a tidying manual than a book you can enjoy at leisure. Unless your idea of leisure is a hundred pages on how to fold your stuff and clean up.
2. Coffee grinder: I got a Timemore C2, a handheld manual coffee grinder, as a Christmas gift for myself. It looks like a neat little tube type thing that my mum says resembles a speaker. Anyway, it works a million times better than the grinder I used to use, which took ages to grind a single ration of coffee.
3. Beanbag: The latest addition to my room, which sits next to the window and dangerously close to the refrigerator (making my drinks an arm-swing away). Now I use it for reading in the afternoons, lazy flashcard days, and the occasional movie night with friends.

✍️ Article: Weganism: Veganism With A Wild Game Twist

In this post, I expanded on a new concept I first read about in a Tim Ferriss newsletter. As its name suggests, it's essentially the vegan diet that permits meat, but only if it's wild-caught and not cultivated.

I discuss if this diet is healthy and sustainable, and how it compares to the established vegan diet.

Click here to read more 🌱

📸 Photo of the Week

Showing off my new grinder. I think Timemore really pulled off the looks on this one – it's stunning to look at.

📖 Quote of the Week

“I’ll eventually come up with something I think might be worth sharing, but I never know whether it’s great or not. And I can’t. That’s not decided until after I publish it, and I’m not part of the decision”

From A Simple Five-Step Formula You Can Use to Become an Idea Machine (Article) by Rocky Ullah. Resurfaced via Readwise.

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Hope you have a great week! 👣

John