Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • We’re All Wealthy Today

      James Clear has become my favorite resource, from his book Atomic Habits to his weekly newsletter to his Twitter account. Today he posted this gem, which I share if only to always remind myself of this. We all enjoy immense wealth today. Make the most of it:

      “You are richer than 93% of people.

      Not in money, but in time.

      108 billion people have lived throughout history. 93% of them are dead.

      You have what every king and queen, every pharaoh and ruler, every CEO and celebrity of the past would give all their wealth for:

      Today.”

      Amen.

    • 2020 Vision

      “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

      There are just 44 days left in 2019, and with that realization, I’m looking ahead at 2020.  What will the new year bring?  Major political change?  A swing away from nationalistic tendencies towards a global, we’re all in this together outlook?  An acceleration in the economy or a recession? Environment progress or rapid climate change after years of neglect?  A return of common sense and dignified communication or an increase in bitter, antagonistic rhetoric?  I don’t see the future, but I’ll hope for improvement in 2020.  Either way, I do know that change comes whether you want it or not, and it’s best to be as prepared as you can be for when it does.

      So with that in mind, and a look towards the New Year, what’s the mission?  Outside of a vote I can’t control larger political forces at play in the world that may lead to conflict, but I can control my general fitness and health through exercise and better nutrition.  I can’t control whether we go through a global recession in 2020, but I can control how much money I spend and to a certain extent how much I earn.  I can’t control the clickbait, extreme views that pull society apart, but I can choose what media to consume.   If stoicism teaches you anything, it’s to focus on improving yourself, and don’t try to control what the rest of the world is doing.  Step in when you can make a difference, offer support and encouragement, but don’t try to change people.  That’s on them.

      Reading, exercise, writing and travel have done more to improve my state of mind than anything else.  Doing more of each makes a lot of sense, and will help build a stronger foundation as I turn the calendar into 2020.  Looking at the future and assuming you’re in it is a fools game, but not preparing for the future is too.  So building habits that offer value today and long-term benefits tomorrow makes sense.  It’s a win-win when you pick the right habits. Change happens, and building resilience through positive habits helps us survive and maybe even thrive when it does.  So that’s my focus as we march towards 2020, tweaking the good habits and phasing out the bad whenever possible.  Acknowledging my small role in the universe, I’m hoping that occurs on both a micro and macro level.

      Today’s post was directly influenced by The Daily Stoic, providing both the Heraclitus quote and the reminder that we can only change ourselves.

       

    • Moments in the Light of Eternity

      “To perceive the world in the light of eternity, to accept your death as a gift, to accept suffering as a path toward joy. All of those are in Christ on the cross.” – Stephen Colbert

      I’m not particularly religious, but I do believe I’m a bit player in eternity.  Is eternity God?  Or is eternity timeless energy reshaping itself into various forms like planets and oceans and trees and sunsets and a cup of tea and people?  It’s way above my pay grade to state a definitive answer.  But like most humans I wonder about the universe and our place in it.  If religion helps you sort this all out in an acceptable way, perhaps you’ve got an advantage over me.

      Stoicism cuts to the root of my pragmatic approach to this eternity, but it isn’t a religion as much as a virtuous approach to life.  Common sense laid out by people long dead, who remind us that it’s right around the corner for us too (so you might as well savor every breath and live the best life you can with what you’ve been given).  Stoicism is thinking about eternity without fairy tales.

      But reading this Stephen Colbert quote twice this morning gave me pause.  Colbert lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was ten years old.  He’s Catholic and his faith is the foundation of his life.  I’m Catholic and don’t give it much thought.  We’re both trying to live a virtuous and good life.  So who’s approach is better?  I don’t believe it matters so much as the end result.  Will all my deceased relatives be standing at the Pearly Gates telling me they told me so as I’m shuffled off to purgatory?  You’ll know that answer someday yourself, and you can point out my sin of doubt when you see me.  Religion uses stories to highlight virtue versus sin and the infallibility of God.  Eternity is infallible.  Put whatever name you want on it.

      Colbert talks about the loss of his father and brothers as a gift from God that he didn’t want.  That’s an extraordinary way of looking at a tragic event, but it makes sense to me. We’re all going to die and we’re all going to be challenged by the passing of those we love.  The reality of death won’t change whether we like it or not.  The question is what are you going to do with that reality?  And what will help you find an answer?  His mother’s answer was to look at that moment, as devastating as it was, in the light of eternity.  And whatever you call eternity, that makes sense to me.

    • Live Awakened

      The book Awakening begins with a foreword by Francis J Stroud, relaying a story the author of the book used to tell when he was alive:

      “A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens.” So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.” – Anthony De Mello

      Today I’m walking all around Edinburgh, feeling quite awake. Yesterday I came across Memento mori at Greyfriars Cemetery and smiled at the sight of this familiar reminder that life is short. Learn who you really are and live a larger life. The rest will take care of itself.

    • Thy Selfe May Pas: A Stoic Reminder at Westminster Abbey

      There are many famous names at Westminster Abbey. The ornate carvings on ornate carvings give a collective sensory explosion in the brain. We may have skilled artisans today, but there aren’t many stone carvers doing this kind of work anymore. Stunning detail everywhere you looked. Add in the throngs of people touring and it can all feel a bit much. The only blessing is they don’t allow photography inside, so the long lines weren’t subjected to selfie-taking vanity shots.

      Deep into the tour at Westminster Abbey in the chapel of St Edmund, well-removed from the famous names, is a young man lost to history. Francis Holles died at the age of 18 in 1622 on his return from fighting in the Netherlands. His grieving family had an elaborate monument carved by Nicholas Stone to honor him and placed it here, amongst other members of the Holles family. Whether there’s any resemblance to Francis the world will never know, but no matter, the power was in the 1620’s English epitaph engraved below.

      “What so thou hast of Nature, or of Arts, youth, beautie, strength, or what excelling parts, of mynd and boddie, letters, arms and worth, his eighteen yeares, beyond his yeares, brought forth then stand and read thyself within this glas how soon theise perish, and thy selfe may pas.

      Mans life is measured by the worke, not dayes, no aged sloth, but active youth hath prayse”

      What parent doesn’t hear the story of Francis and not feel a pang of grief for both him and his parents? For all the famous kings and queens, writers and politicians who spend eternity at Westminster Abbey, this is the one person who stood out above all the rest for me.

    • The Great Conversation

      I’m bouncing again, book-to-book, pulling this book off the shelf, scanning over that sentence on the Kindle app, and stacking the pile higher. It’s funny how one thing sparks another thing, it’s what Robert Maynard Hutchins called The Great Conversation, written work building on written work, theory built on theory, across time, but shrunken down to just the books in my personal library. Each offering a little something to keep the imagination abuzz. This morning’s great conversation started with a little stoicism:

      “What’s the meaning of life? Why was I born? Most of us struggle with these questions—sometimes when we’re young, sometimes not until we’re older. Rarely do we find much in the way of direction. But that’s simply because we miss the point. As Viktor Frankl points out in Man’s Search for Meaning , it is not our question to ask. Instead, it is we who are being asked the question. It’s our lives that are the answer.” – Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

      That led me right to the source, and I pulled Frankl’s classic off the shelf for additional perspective:

      “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” – Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning

      Outside I hear the telltale roar of hot air balloon burners. It breaks my focus and I walk outside barefoot to look for the familiar visitors, but all I hear is them announcing “we’re close”. Bare feet quickly turn cold on the pool deck and I move back inside. Shoes are one of our best inventions as a species, but we miss so much information about our environment that is telegraphed through our bare feet (today’s telegraph: put some shoes on you fool, that’s what they were invented for). I glance outside and spot the yellow top of smiley face balloon over the trees and, seeing its landing elsewhere, give a nod of welcome and get back inside to the great conversation. Life is calling, but I have a few things to mull over first.

      “Well, what are you? What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself: your kidneys, your liver, your blood vessels? No. However far back you go in your memory it is always some external manifestation of yourself where you came across your identity: in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now, listen carefully. You in others – this is what you are, this is what your consciousness has breathed, and lived on, and enjoyed throughout your life, your soul, your immortality – your life in others.” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

      I read that passage for the first time in 1989, the year I graduated from college, not in Doctor Zhivago, but as a quote from a book by Warren Bennis called On Becoming a Leader. This book, along with Frankl and more recently Holiday’s books, can be thought of as stepping stones in the stream of life, there for me when I needed a solid footing on my way across. And they’re also voices at the table, part of the great conversation happening still. There are hundreds of voices at that table: authors, poets, songwriters, coaches, family and friends. All voices in that great conversation, ripples across time, influencing me in ways subtle and profound. And you’re at the table too. Welcome.

    • Dancing Across Borders

      “Look at [life] like going to a really nice restaurant, you take it as a fact that the meal isn’t going to last forever. Never mind if that’s the way it should be, or whether you feel like you’re owed more meal, or you resent the fact that the meal isn’t eternal. It’s just the case that you have this one meal. So it would make sense, wouldn’t it, to try to suck the marrow out of it? To focus on the flavours? To not let yourself be distracted by irritation at the fact that there’s a woman at the next table wearing too much perfume?” – Lauren Tillinghast, quoted in Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

      I enjoyed this Burkeman book more than I expected I would. I’m not a “happiness” seeker, so I generally avoid books that claim to have all the answers for finding it. This book destroys some of the snake oil salespeople out there while reinforcing some philosophy I happen to embrace, including stoicism and Buddhism. But it’s his chapter on Memento mori and his thoughts on letting death seep back into your life that I found most profound. Readers of this blog know this theme well, but it isn’t a morbid fascination as much as a call to action. So dance today! There are no guarantees of tomorrow.

      I’m traveling a lot at the moment. Yesterday Massachusetts, today New York, next week London, then Scotland, and repeat. But start with now, and hope you’re blessed with tomorrow. And today has been very good indeed.

      Which brings me back to this Tillinghast quote. Life should be viewed as a great event, and we should live it as grandly as circumstances allow. Have the wine, savor the meal, indulge in some dessert, maybe have a cordial to cap the night. What a wonderful analogy to a lifetime. Always too brief, but a wonderful experience while you’re having it. So I’ll savor this lovely glass of Tuscan Blend and anticipate the meal I’ve ordered with a toast. Propino tibi! I drink to your health!

    • In the Moment

      “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’” – Marcus Aurelius

      There are times when I read a page in a book and realize as I reach the end that my mind didn’t make the journey with my eyes. My mind will race along with thoughts of urgency of my own design, distractions of this, that and the other thing. Am I not in a place to be reading these words at this time? Sometimes closing the book and addressing the pressing thoughts is the answer, but other times the answer is to take a deep breath, push aside the noise and refocus the mind. In an inner dialogue version of I’ll turn this car around right now! I tell myself I’m here for this page, and you might as well stick with this, mind of mine.

      I understand why my mind is racing. I have upcoming trips to New York, London and Scotland the next three weeks. Logistics, meeting preparation, and ensuring what I’ll leave behind doesn’t fall apart in my absence consumes me as I read about, of all things, stillness. They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear… in this case the teacher is patiently standing over my desk while the other students giggle and I jolt awake from a daydream.

      We live in a noisy, demanding world, and it feels like your brain is like the close-up shot of the crowd in a tennis match, following the ball this way, then that way, then “Ooohh!” followed by “Woah!” and so on. The next three weeks are pulsing in my thoughts, but I know I’m getting ahead of myself. There was a moment yesterday when I contemplated packing my bag for anticipated Isle of Skye November weather when I caught myself, thinking I’m going to need that bag for a business trip to Rochester, New York beginning tomorrow. Plan for the future, but please, focus on now!

      Which brings me back to… now. I’ve set aside reading Stillness Is The Key to write this blog post. The list of things to do between now and the end of November is expanding rapidly, if only in my mind. I follow the Getting Things Done approach and write it down to get it out of my head, and something else pops up and I write that down in turn. Such is the power of anticipation, but that teacher is standing over my desk again, and I look up slowly from my scattered mindscape to hear her remind me “There’s only now“. Be in the moment. Now: This Sunday in New Hampshire, surrounded by golden leaves lit by morning sun; leaves that will be piled on the ground when you return in three weeks. Make the most of this moment, won’t you? Tomorrow will be there waiting if you should get there.

    • On Foliage and the Passing of Time

      “Who made the world?
      Who made the swan, and the black bear?
      Who made the grasshopper?
      This grasshopper, I mean-
      the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
      the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
      who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
      who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
      Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
      Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
      I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
      I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
      into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
      how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
      which is what I have been doing all day.
      Tell me, what else should I have done?
      Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?”
      —Mary Oliver, ‘The Summer Day’

      Mary Oliver passed away in January this year, at the age of 83.  If I may say it, too soon.  With her passing, her question commands even more urgency than before:

      Tell me, what else should I have done?
      Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?”

      This afternoon I drove back from meetings in Boston, flipped open my laptop and diligently followed up on the list of items that demanded my time.  All save one, which required closing the laptop, stepping outside and finding foliage.  New Hampshire glows in orange, yellow and red in October, and I’ve spent entirely too much of the first eleven days of the month indoors or behind the wheel of my car.  So a walk down to a local pond on a gusty day felt more like living than crafting another email for somebody’s spam filter.

      Foliage stirs up memories of autumns past, and I try to push those aside.  Not because the memories aren’t mostly pleasant, but because there’s more than enough living now to occupy my limited brain cells.  And there’s only today; words we all know but seem to push aside for the distraction of the moment.  “What else should I have done?”  Indeed.  Take “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” and replace “life” with “day”.  For really, that’s all we have, isn’t it?  The foliage illuminates the cold black water of a small pond nearby, and soon those leaves will float down onto the water, drift along the surface for awhile and then slowly slip quietly under the surface to return to the earth.  The briefness of this life exemplified in a single leaf.  Had I not gone to witness the foliage would the opportunity have been there tomorrow?  Surely that’s a trick question.

    • Let the Clamor Be

      Wednesday afternoon I found myself in a customer’s Audi driving to lunch. His customer in turn was also in the car (my role being “vendor”). The 15 minutes spent in the car was spent listening to the driver’s pro-Trump diatribe on the impeachment investigation and his firm belief that anything he said would result in strong nods of agreement from the two passengers in his car. He didn’t notice that neither of us said anything. I don’t know the political views of the end user, but I do know mine. More importantly, neither of them know my political views. I happen to have strong views on this topic, but those views had no place in a business meeting. Aside from lack of professionalism, it’s unnecessary noise that distracts from purpose. Me jumping in on this topic would have created more rather than relieved tension.

      “Learn to stop trying to fix things, to stop being so preoccupied with trying to control one’s experience of the world, to give up trying to replace unpleasant thoughts and emotions with more pleasant ones, and to see that, through dropping the ‘pursuit of happiness’ a more profound peace will result.” – Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

      I’m not seeking “happiness” (that’s akin to playing Whac-A-Mole) but I do have a fair amount of restlessness I work through. So it’s interesting if only to me when two books arrive at the top of my stack of real and virtual books at the same time. Burkeman’s and Ryan Holiday’s latest, Stillness is the Key. Both tackle similar ground – with focus on the value of Stoicism in particular, but common themes in Buddhism and (in Holiday’s book), other world religions and philosophies.

      Burkeman throws out a nugget in his book that struck me as profound: “Let the Clamour be.”  In American English we’d spell that ‘clamor’.  But no matter, the point is made.  I’ve worked on that for years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so.  What I don’t do is actively meditate.  I take my meditation in turning off the noise and doing yardwork, or gardening, washing dishes or simply taking a quiet walk.  Am I missing out on something significant by not meditating?  Probably, but I feel better about myself for getting something done while I’m in my mind.

      Which brings me to the acorns.  I’ve got 10’s of thousands of them sitting on my front lawn right now, just waiting for me to rake them up.  Just me, a rake, shovel and barrel, and endless acorns.  I can feel the stillness already.