You have the right to a purpose. If you do not have a purpose, one will be appointed for you.
~ David Cain from, http://www.raptitude.com/2010/05/never-forget-your-rights/
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What a delightful riff on the standarized wording commonly known as the “Miranda rights”!
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The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happines by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.
~ Samuel Johnson
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Eat like a human being, drink like a human being, dress up, marry, have children, get politically active — suffer abuse, bear with a headstrong brother, father, son, neighbor, or companion. Show us these things so we can see that you truly have learned from the philosophers.
~ Epictetus
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All of these desperate and depraved acts we see ‘bad people’ do, we are all ultimately capable of them too. Under different circumstances, with a different upbringing and different experiences, every one of us could be a killer. But if you got lucky, and that’s not the way it turned out, you might be inclined to put yourself on a distinctly higher plane.
~ David Cain from, https://www.raptitude.com/2009/08/should-we-have-compassion-for-killers/
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I’ve learned to use venom and outrage as indicators. When I taste venom… when I feel outraged… that’s when I redouble my efforts to use my brain and be rational.
I’m not convinced (one way or the other) as to wether it’s even possible to never feel outraged–or if that’s even a good end-goal.
But I am certain that–without exception–if ever I let my outrage direct my actions, I regret it later.
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Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.
Sanity means tying it to your own actions.
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This type of view of the world — and like I said, I think it’s the prevailing view — stems from an ideal that many people have in their heads of what the world should be like. They might not realize they have that ideal, but it’s there. And the world will never reach this Platonic ideal, because it’s just this image of perfection that does not match reality. Reality and this ideal are incompatible.
~ Leo Babauta from, http://zenhabits.net/2008/08/whats-wrong-with-the-world-not-a-damn-thing/
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This ties in with yesterday’s comments about the Beatles’ Let It Be. There’s certainly a peculier passion associated with youth. But there’s a much nicer circumspection of age. When things are going badly, relax for they will not last. Whent things are going well, relax for they will not last. The error is in not relaxing, not in the circumstances being observed.
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In fact, I’ve let years of my life go by this way. I could be working on something I truly love, and then I’d hit a snag. I’d get frustrated, then avoid it for the rest of the day. I just wouldn’t want to be frustrated anymore, so I wouldn’t touch it. There’s always later. Perhaps if a better mood came along I’d be willing to tackle it.
~ David Cain from, https://www.raptitude.com/2009/03/protect-your-dreams-from-contamination/
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I’m not sure I agree with how easy it sounds the way he puts it. But he’s dead on with the point.
Here’s another spin on it, the late, great, Jack Vance as Curly.
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https://www.raptitude.com/2011/09/how-to-walk-across-a-parking-lot
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I aspire to one day look back and say: I wrote a single thing which is as good as the above.
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The caveat is that this quadrant can be mistaken as something that shouldn’t be part of life, but that is not true. It is really important to have a balanced life between work and your personal life. You need downtime to not get burnt out and that is where quadrant four comes into the picture. The challenge is you allocate most of your time to quadrant two, with just enough of time spent in quadrant four to get by.
~ Thanh Pham from, http://www.asianefficiency.com/productivity/coveys-time-management-quadrant/
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I disagree.
Everything in the UN-important half (the lower half in the diagrams) of the quadrant is the Bad Lands to be avoided. There’s no such thing as “work life balance.” I spent decades trying to fiddle with that balance. There is only life. I strive to do only important things. I strive to only do NON-urgent things by paying attention to what I should be doing. I strive for a wide variety of activities which are all necessary, important and not urgent. One might even say: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
I have control over only two things: My thoughts and my actions.
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How can you improve your conception of rationality? Not by saying to yourself, “It is my duty to be rational.” By this you only enshrine your mistaken conception. Perhaps your conception of rationality is that it is rational to believe the words of the Great Teacher, and the Great Teacher says, “The sky is green,” and you look up at the sky and see blue. If you think: “It may look like the sky is blue, but rationality is to believe the words of the Great Teacher,” you lose a chance to discover your mistake. Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green. If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.
~ Eliezer S. Yudkowsky from, http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/
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If you don’t think intentionally… If your ideas and beliefs don’t produce a working model of reality… well…
When an honest person discovers they are wrong, they stop being wrong or they stop being honest. It’s your choice.
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http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm
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~ Lee Sandlin
“Where’s the pull-quote?” I don’t know how to choose one.
“What’s the take-away?” I don’t know how this could be made more succinct.
“Why should I read it?” I have no idea how to place the thing which is “The Second World War” into context. (…nor into the context of my life, and certainly not into the context of your life.)
Obviously, I don’t remember the second world war.
Obviously, I don’t understand the second world war.
But I do know that this shook me to my core. This brought a tear to my eye. I read it twice — the first time in one sitting; straight through. Somehow, it seems to grab at all the frayed, loose ends of all the things I know about the War and– well, just grabbed them all into one place.
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Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. … I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Society has any number of pressing needs that are crying out to be tackled. But there’s a need that everyone can start addressing immediately — no experience or Kickstarter campaign required: regularly showing more human kindness.
~ Brett McKay from, https://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/05/12/what-good-shall-i-do-this-day/
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Many years ago, my mother bought me a little metal rectangular paper weight which says, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” The type is laid in lines, and the, “no matter how small” is teeny-tiny so each time I read it, I have to look closely.
It also helps me remember to look a little more closely throughout my day.
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It’s quite easily forgotten that it’s required that you respect yourself before you’re able to respect another. Because it’s always about respecting the other and getting respect from others. But how often is it the case that we are not respecting ourselves? I’ve been taught quit well that you can only give from your abundance. So if I’ve got 3 coins and somebody asks me to give them four coins I know I don’t have it. I only have three! Let’s say I need two for myself, then I’ve only one in abundance that I can actually share. The same goes for respect. If I don’t respect myself, there’s very little to give to others. If I do give — which most people do, they tend to give respect — it comes with expectations. You will expect something in return because you’re giving although you don’t have it. So you expect something in return because it hurts to give it away like that. You don’t give because of the joy of giving, of sharing. You’re kind of filling the bank with credit, and you think “ok, I want something in return.”
~ Paul Brand from, https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2016/04/07/ga-105-how-to-improve-your-business-with-change-management-with-paul-brand/
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I really do need to work on having respect for myself. My incessant internal monolog of, “Work harder! Work faster! Be better!”, turns out to be a brutal, abusive, destructive task-master.
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The ideal day is not one which is completely fixed — neither fixed-the-same every day, nor fixed-the-same week after week. The ideal day is one in which I know my goals at various levels– daily, weekly, yearly. etc.. A day where I feel no worry about making progress, because I know I’m making progress. A day where I am presented with challenges I feel that I have chosen. A day where I get to work on things which are interesting to me, and useful to others. A day where surprises are interesting and add value, (as opposed to causing me to react by feeling stress, panic and existential crises.)
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Notice a subtle point here: Seneca isn’t saying that prosperity is not worth pursuing. It is, after all, a preferred indifferent. But it is preferred only insofar it doesn’t get in the way of conducting a virtuous life, as one gets the sense Lucilius was worrying about insofar his own pursuits were concerned. Which is why his friend reminds him that he is under no obligation at all to live in the fast lane.
~ Massimo Pigliucci from, https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2017/12/21/seneca-to-lucilius-on-the-futility-of-half-way-measures/
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Just yesterday, for the first time ever, I considered removing the rear-view mirror from the Jeep. (Instead, I twisted it upwards to view the roof.) Since the Jeep is slow and old, as am I, there is ALWAYS someone tail-gating me. I’ve narrowly avoided accidents, where watching the tail-gater behind me distracted me from the road ahead. I’m so much in the “slow lane”, I am literally being run over. Where, really, are you going?
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The three lines cross in that intersection, and you’re like, “Okay, I think I know where I am.” In the case of your “why,” one great intersection is saying, “Hey, what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? What would be the things that I would just love to be doing in my life if I could not fail? Unfortunately, somewhere along the line between high school, college, and maybe even before high school, kids stopped dreaming up crazy ideas, and they start thinking, “Okay, well, this is what society expects.”
~ Alden Mills from, https://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/08/18/podcast-130-become-unstoppable-with-alden-mills/
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1. What would I do if I couldn’t fail?
2. Whose lifestyle would I like to follow?
3. What am I passionate about, and in what can I find purpose?
The answers to these questions will not tell me what to do, nor how to live my life. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what to do and how to live, (and I hope I will always be working on that.) But these three questions are an excellent triplet of tools for picking at the bigger picture.
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Paring down one’s possessions and schedule are go-to ways to seek simplicity because they are outward, accessible, concrete actions that produce fairly immediate results. Their weakness, when practiced as their own ends, however, is that they lack a set of overarching criteria for how they should be carried out, as well as intrinsic motivation for following them through.
Practicing outward moves towards simplification, without this set of criteria, is like placing spokes in a wheel, without connecting them to a hub.
Simplicity needs a heart, and its center must be this: having a clear purpose.
~ Brett McKay from, http://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/11/06/spiritual-disciplines-simplicity/
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Throughout 2017 I’ve been slowly paring down. Fewer physical things sure, but also changing out some things and hobbies and projects and people. Can I eliminate one? Can I replace two of something with a simpler one?
I’m a “systems” person. I get things done via the observe, orient, decide, and act loop. For 2018 I’ve no delusions of rewiring my brain and kicking all my systems and processes to the curb.
I’ve realized, (far too recently,) that I need to take more time to “zoom out” and to take the time to consider how the really big things in my life fit together. Do they fit together? What if some really big component of who I am — even if it’s a great, fine thing — doesn’t fit with the rest of everything? What should I change; everything else, or that one great, fine thing?
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I do love to spend the indoor, chilly, winter season thinking about the big picture — and now, perhaps a bit more of the really big picture.
Goodbye 2017! I will look back on you fondly.
MEMENTO MORI
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The need for silence and solitude obviously seems incredibly relevant to the over-convenienced citizens of the modern world who feel saturated with the ceaseless noise that issues from every corner of their lives. But as mentioned at the start, men have in fact craved these states for thousands of years, long before anything digital, or electronic, or urban ever existed.
What accounts for the timeless, seemingly universal appeal of quiet seclusion?
~ Brett McKay from https://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/10/16/spiritual-disciplines-solitude-silence/
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I feel the sentiment with which Tycho Brahe died, perhaps as strongly as he did — His “ne frustra vixisse videar” was a noble feeling, and in him had produced its fruits — He had not lived in vain — He was a benefactor to his species — But the desire is not sufficient — The spark from Heaven is given to few — It is not to be obtained by intreaty or by toil — To be profitable to my Children, seems to me within the compass of my powers — To that let me bound my wishes, and my prayers — And may that be granted to them!
~ John Quincy Adams from, https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/08/16/john-quincy-adams-diaries-effectiveness/
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