Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • The Very Best Day of All

      “Let us therefore set out whole-heartedly, leaving aside our many distractions and exert ourselves in this single purpose, before we realize too late the swift and unstoppable flight of time and are left behind. As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” — Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius

      It must be Spring, for I return again to Seneca’s urgent call: “Seize what flees”. And so it is our quest to live this day as if it were our very last. To meet this, our moment at hand, and do something with it.

      That’s a heavy ask. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform with statements like that. We all want to seize the day, but what if we’ve got bills to pay and a car that doesn’t drive itself to work quite yet? Who’s going to clean the dishes while we’re off seizing the day?

      Seneca had his own daily obligations and understood the recklessness of grabbing the moment. Does it carry more weight when you think of him as mere dust mixed in the timeless sands of Rome? He knew the stakes, but also knew we all have things to do. Just don’t make it your life’s purpose to fulfill the dreams of others. Make a stand for your own dreams today too.

      Welcome today as the very best day of all. It’s all we have, really. What would make it particularly remarkable given the chorus of requests for our time? Let’s carve out a little of our brief time to seize that. Deal?

    • Struggle Informs

      “Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.” — Flannery O’Connor

      This is the most vivid description of ego as our enemy that I’ve come across. Whatever your feelings on God, put that aside for a moment and recognize the prayer for what it is—a cry to get out of our own way to do what we know we’re here to do. For there’s nothing more universal than the internal struggle of ego casting a shadow on our true mission.

      Struggle informs. It teaches us where our gaps are. Gaps in knowledge or skill or physical strength. Learning where our gaps are offers us an opportunity to bridge it with effort and help. Alternatively, we might turn from the gap thinking it a chasm we cannot cross. We all make choices on what we might grow into and what we let die. When that dying is a piece of us it feels a bit more personal, doesn’t it?

      And yet we must choose to move forward in our lives. We must decide what to be and go be it. That may sound smug and simplistic on the surface, especially when we so clearly see the gaps and view it as a chasm. But the ask isn’t to take a flying leap, but to begin closing that gap, one step at a time. To gently push ourselves out of the way, just a little, to see what we might become over time, should we take another step after this one.

      What casts a greater shadow over our potential than our own ego? We must learn to get out of our own way. For there’s so much more beyond our current position. Can’t you just see it?

    • Here in My Mold

      ‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life
      Tryna make ends meet
      You’re a slave to money then you die
      I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
      You know the one that takes you to the places
      Where all the veins meet yeah
      No change, I can change
      I can change, I can change
      But I’m here in my mold
      I am here in my mold
      But I’m a million different people
      From one day to the next
      I can’t change my mold
      No, no, no, no, no
      Have you ever been down?
      — The Verve, Bitter Sweet Symphony

      Do you hear Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” quote in your head reading the lyrics of Bitter Sweet Symphony? This song exploded in the mid-1990’s, becoming a theme song of sorts for Generation X and maybe some of those who followed. How do the lyrics hold up, almost three decades later? I think it depends on how well you’ve broken free of your mold.

      Breaking free of that mold you’ve been cast in and following your heart is reckless. The very idea of breaking free disrupts all you’ve built around you. For what is a mold but that? Our very place in this world is determined by where we place ourselves. Life is change and moving beyond our old self. We must grow and see where the road takes us. Where our heart takes us.

      Watching people you care about quickly turn from vibrantly alive to quickly sliding into the next triggers an urgency to break molds. To do the things you’ve been putting off and live today. This is what the stoics have been telling us all along. Memento Mori. Carpe Diem.

      Get after it already. Follow the road where all your veins meet. We can all change.

    • Holding the Love I’ve Known

      When my body won’t hold me anymore
      And it finally lets me free
      Where will I go?
      Will the trade winds take me south through Georgia grain?
      Or tropical rain?
      Or snow from the heavens?
      Will I join with the ocean blue?
      Or run into a savior true?
      And shake hands laughing
      And walk through the night, straight to the light
      Holding the love I’ve known in my life
      And no hard feelings
      — The Avett Brothers, No Hard Feelings

      I’m watching four people in my family waste away before my eyes. We all have our time, but it still comes as a shock when that time is in such close proximity to now. When you’re the one holding it together for them and others you learn a few things about yourself. Mostly you learn to stop deferring and just say and do the things that need saying and doing.

      I’ve noticed some doubt and regret overwhelm those facing rapidly receding time on this earth. Life is unfair, we all see that and reconcile with it as best we can, but it’s particularly unfair for those who have the rug pulled out from under them in the prime of life. You mean to have that conversation, experience that moment, see that place for the first time or maybe for one last time, and realize that you’ll never reach it.

      What are we to do, knowing we haven’t done all we want to do, but celebrate what we did have the chance to do? To hold on to the love we have known? For that’s all that matters in the end. We make the ripple we make, and hope that the world might feel the urge to surf it. Life isn’t the accumulation of stuff or places or rungs on the career ladder, it’s the people you love in this world.

      We all have our time, sometimes far sooner than we ever imagined. We either hold a grudge with the universe or dance in the time we have left. No hard feelings—only love.

    • Playing At the Edges of Knowing

      I believe I will never quite know.
      Though I play at the edges of knowing,
      truly I know
      our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving,
      which is the way I walked on,
      softly,
      through the pale-pink morning light.
      — Mary Oliver, Bone

      Like the beach Mary Oliver walked in this poem, life ebbs and flows. We either surf the rip or get pulled under by it. This latest period of chaos could overwhelm us or strengthen our resolve to persevere in the face of it.

      We never quite know all that we seek to understand. Just when we think we’ve got it figured out the world throws another curveball at you. Coming out of a pandemic, thinking that things will finally get better and… they don’t. Not yet anyway. You know that this too shall pass, somehow. But life asks us to wait just a bit longer still. Or life tells you that your time has come, sooner than you expected it to. Just when you thought you’d arrived.

      Our part is not meant to be easy. Our part is not knowing, but staying with it anyway. Our part is to support one another in the face of uncertainty.

      Amor Fati, or “love of fate”, is the stoic’s answer to these times. Amor is not quite right. We don’t have to love our fate. But accepting it frees us to focus on the moments we have together. While there’s still time.

    • Strategic, Interested Experiencing

      “When people stop believing in an afterlife, everything depends on making the most of this life. And when people start believing in progress—in the idea that history is headed toward an ever more perfect future—they feel far more acutely the pain of their own little lifespan, which condemns them to missing out on almost all of that future. And so they try to quell their anxieties by cramming their lives with experience.” — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

      Burkeman’s statement isn’t something you just fly by without contemplation. I have people in my life who would be indignant about the very idea of there being no afterlife. You might say I’m more open to the concept. But no matter what your belief about what happens next, most would agree in the concept of the infinite unknown. It was here before we were conceived and began our march through borrowed time, and it will envelope us again sooner than we’re comfortable with thinking about. Really, it’s all around us, we’re just stubbornly alive beings bumping up against infinity every day until we rejoin it. Giddy-Up.

      We get busy in life, marching through our days and obligations. I was just thinking to myself that I’m a bit short on micro-adventures lately. Blame it on my day job running parallel to this blog. I have a few friends that question my sanity for trading so many of my four thousand weeks for a career. But life is more than chasing waterfalls and sunsets. You’ve got to make something of your time, don’t you? Or do you need to do something in your time? Can you do both? Can we really have it all?

      Burkeman recommends “strategic underachievement”, which is simply “nominating in advance whole areas of life in which you won’t expect excellence of yourself” to mitigate the underlying stress of living for both commitments and experience. Focus on what you want to excel in, and gently put the rest aside on the priority list—placing the not-so-important stuff into tomorrow is a gentle way of punting what doesn’t really matter in this brash act of living life on our own terms.

      “Tomorrow is for the lazy mind, the sluggish mind, the mind that is not interested” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

      The answer, I believe, is to focus on the things that make you feel most alive, things that put you right in the mix of a fulfilling, satisfying life. That might be a sunset in the tropics or washing the dishes with your favorite song playing louder than it should. Embracing the mundane and the remarkable as it comes, but prioritizing that which places you squarely where you might maximize these experiences. We ought to decide what we want to savor most, and what to let fall away.

      Let’s face it, passively waiting for life experiences to come your way leads to a whole lot of waiting. Strategic underachievement in one area of your life means you’ve got to proactively work to strategically overachieve in other areas. Be interested in this business of living! Get up off your passive expectations about living and go out and meet the things you most want to achieve, be and do in this short life. Not so much “cramming experience”, but rather, strategic, and interested, experiencing. Wherever we might be.

    • Be Yourself

      To be nobody but
      yourself in a world
      which is doing its best day and night to make you like
      everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
      which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
      ― e e cummings

      “Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.”
      ― e e cummings

      Delighting in a blizzard, I forgo the endless news telling you what’s right in front of you and instead read poetry and sip espresso. Were the snow deeper I might slip on the snowshoes and fly. Give it time, I think, and it will catch up to where my dreams are. Who doesn’t become a child again when hunkered down in a snowstorm?

      There’s a spirit in a blizzard that calls me outside. Swirling snow globe bliss, shaken again and again until it spins madly about. The landscape is cloaked and the familiar appears foreign. I suppose it’s the adventure of being immersed in a storm that draws me outside, or maybe it’s the thought of doing what most people would tell me not to do. A blizzard is a rebellion against the norm. It turns our expectations upside down and does its own thing, and I find it reassuring and a bit thrilling.

      “The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.” — e e cummings

      The ego is the enemy, the Stoics and Ryan Holiday would suggest, and this week my ego experienced a generous portion of highs and a healthy dose of lows. I put it all aside and focus on who I’d like to be instead. There’s no use living your life for the approval of others, for they only see the world through their own filter. You’ve got to be yourself, and find out who you are with every new experience, every new thrill and setback and odd twist of fate.

      The wind picks up, and billions of snowflakes surf the breeze to beach themselves where they may, transforming the landscape in their huddled masses. Packed in together in swirling madness, most land where the wind takes them. But the funny part of a blizzard is that where the snow lands isn’t always where it might stay. The wind can easily lift snow up again, to land in an entirely different place.

      The world is similarly mad. The masses land where they’re carried by the wind currents of place and expectation and obligation. Yet we might still surf the breeze and find our own landing place. Should we choose to get out there and fly.

    • To Be a Philosopher

      “You must be one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling faculty or externals, and apply yourself either to things within or without you; that is, be either a philosopher, or one of the vulgar.” — Epictetus, The Enchiridion

      Do you ever wonder why the Stoics are more popular than ever? Why would Epictetus, who died in 135 A.D. be relevant today? Why would Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180 A.D. be so revered? Or Seneca, who died in 65 A.D.? I believe it comes down to a few key reasons: First and foremost, they wrote from a very human perspective that is still relatable no matter what millennium you’re passing your time in. Second; if it weren’t relevant it would have long ago been vanquished to the trash heap like the lesser work of millions before and after them. And finally, you might also say they gain a lot of momentum as the great men and women who followed them referred to them for wisdom and inspiration. And if it worked for them, why not us?

      On our journey from the vulgar, callow juvenile inside each of us to the refined, philosophical sage we may wish to become, we learn to cultivate discipline. Discipline draws us deeper into our true selves, structures our lives in such a way that we might accomplish a few things and bring us closer to becoming who we want to be. To stop looking from one shiny object to the next and focus on what means the most, now, and when we reach that stepping stone find the next.

      Will our own work become timeless, or vanquished with the lesser work of millions? We’re dealt an unfair hand trying to measure up with the greatest thinkers of the past. That’s not stoicism, that’s upward comparison. Comparing yourself to others leads to unfocused misery. It’s better to compare yourself with the person you used to be instead. Stoicism is a quest to become the best person you can be in your short time on earth. Ultimately everything we do shows the way for those who follow us. Just as those great Stoics did. If it’s transcendently great it might become timeless. But it’s not for us to decide such things.

      Our only purpose is to maximize our potential in the time we’re given. To cultivate our own ruling faculty and apply ourselves to becoming what we might. While we may.

    • Where Savoring Happens

      “He who is everywhere is nowhere.” – Seneca

      Simplify.

      Focus on fewer things. Focus on important things. Things of consequence.

      Quietly move away from the shallow pool of life into the deeper waters. Less splashing and shouting. You can’t dive deeply in shallow water. You must go deeper—away from the noise.

      Where life is richer. Conversations are more meaningful. Where recognition and realization take place. Where savoring happens.

      Give the mind a bit more elbow room and see where the world might take you when you aren’t constantly distracted by the noise of life.

      See what you may create. What you may come to understand. Where you may go. And who you may become.

      Here.

    • The Trick In the Compass

      “It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.” — Simone Weil

      The quote above is making the rounds on Twitter again, stirred up first by Maria Popova and recently by Tim Ferriss. When the student is ready the teacher will appear, it is said, and whatever brought the quote back to my attention, I was ready to receive it. Maybe you are too.

      The last time I consulted my compass, I was sitting in a parking lot in front of a sporting goods store, hearing the truth. He told me to stop writing about death so much, but accepted my answer that stoicism isn’t a preoccupation with death, it’s a reminder to live with urgency. It would be the last conversation we’d ever have, and I wonder at the exchange even now.

      The trick in the compass is that it doesn’t show true north, it shows magnetic north. The difference between the two is called the magnetic inclination. Magnetic north, simplified, changes with the molten core of the Earth. Its more fluid, if you will. We change in just such a way. Just like the compass, we must adjust our heading based on how far from true north our core has shifted our magnetic north. No wonder so many find themselves off course.

      Making ourselves clear to ourselves is a journey. It requires walking many miles, the consumption of vast amounts of poetry and prose, a good friend or mentor alongside, and certainly, a whole lot of writing. But mostly it requires stumbling over hard truths, picking yourself up and setting yourself back on the path.