On Thursday, I attended a public lecture presented by Dr. Jordan Peterson. In his lectures, ostensibly billed as a book tour, Dr. Peterson takes one of the rules from his two most recent books as his starting point and launches off from there. The chosen rule for this lecture was “Make one room in your house as beautiful as possible,” the same rule I reflected upon several months ago using this same medium. The introductory remarks offered by his wife hewed much closer to the topic as she addressed her experiences remodeling parts of their homes, but I expected that based on the length of his talk. His remarks were more abstract, generalizing to the level of art itself as a glimpse towards the possibility of better, even the existence of better. In this way, bringing art or beautiful things more generally into your living space is a way of reminding yourself that you can be better and that life can too. It was heady stuff, but I found myself able to follow throughout and everyone around me rapt until about the hour mark, at which point a few people started fidgeting and he circled back to his main points and concluded.

Once the lecture concluded, there was a brief interlude and the couple returned, she reading questions from a laptop and he providing responses. The questions were not trifling and the responses were more reflections than answers, but what struck me most during the Q&A were his pauses. After each question was read, he took a few seconds to collect his thoughts before speaking. The effect was to add gravitas to each of the responses. It suggested intellectual honesty and simultaneous respect for the questioner. I am unsure how well it will translate to the virtual meeting setting in which I so often find myself, but I do plan to try to pause an extra second before answering certain questions to see how it impacts the quality of my communication.