Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • Just the Start

      “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Happy Birthday to Marcus Aurelius. April 26th is a heck of day to be born (has a nice ring to it I think). But birthdays are just the start: to have done something with one’s time afterwards is the thing. Aurelius did some things and we still talk of him. Not a bad run for him, and surely not all emperors were born to do things. The same for us common folk. Yet we too may rise above the norm.

      Productivity isn’t a call to work ourselves to the bone, but to do work that matters with each day we’re blessed with. To progress in our endeavors towards a higher aim. A successful life isn’t about any single accomplishment, it’s about the process of becoming something more with each day we’re blessed with.

      Indeed, the thing is the living each day. It could all end at any time. Momento mori. That expiration date will come one day, hopefully not today, and we must be aware of our eventual date with death and live fully today. Today is just the start of whatever we have in the balance. Make something of it.

    • What Is Mine

      “We have to make the best use of the things which are actually in our power, and use everything else according to their nature.”
      — Epictetus, Discourses

      It’s easy to get caught up in things. I wrestle with it myself at times, mostly out of a sense of fairness. We were raised to know what is right and what is wrong, and when we see things that are wrong we expect to see things made right. This is folly. The world is unfair, it always has been, and the only way to navigate this world without being forever caught in despair is to let go of that which we cannot control. That doesn’t mean to give up, and it doesn’t mean to let the worst of humanity rule the roost either. It means to focus on what we have agency over and nothing more.

      “What is mine is mine, and what is not is not.”

      Epictetus was born into slavery, studied under Musonius Rufus and became famous as a philosopher after he was emancipated. So it’s easy to see how he latched onto this idea of focusing on what is within one’s power. If you’re a slave you don’t have much agency over your own life. When you’re emancipated, you have much more, but you’ve got that experience of being enslaved as insight into how to move through life.

      And what of us? What enslaves us? We may boast of being free, but how many of us fall in line with what other’s expect of us? How many are so tethered to the screen on their phone that they won’t look up and look someone in the eye? Which offers more truth for us? All we have is this moment together. We must learn to emancipate ourselves from that which enslaves us and focus on what is essential.

      “And when I do die, how will I die? Like a man who gives up everything that belongs to someone else.” — Epictetus, Discourses

      There are experiences we want to have in this lifetime. Some will be reached, some will fall by the wayside. What we do with our brief time isn’t always up to us, but we may control what we pay attention to and how we react to each encounter. Whatever will be will be (Que Sera, Sera). The rest will pass through our grasp. The secret to a happy life is learning to let those things fall away.

    • Our Many Short Races

      “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” — Walter Elliot

      Fortitudine vincimus (by endurance we conquer) — the family motto of Sir Ernest Shackleton

      When we look back on our lives thus far, we often gloss over the small, daily challenges that we had to overcome just to get through the day and only remember the good times we had. Sure, we remember the big setbacks and the losses (it’s hard to ever forget a gut punch). But each small challenge conquered honed and shaped who we are. The race was won, at least that day’s race, and we moved on to the next.

      My favorite rowing workout is an interval workout of 10×500 meters. It’s an intense burst of energy applied to a relatively short distance, and then a brief rest period before doing it all over again. I’m still covering 5000 meters, but there’s no time to settle in to a lower standard of performance or to get bored. Work, rest, work again until the work is done.

      So why not apply this process to our creative work? Write quickly, take a minute or two minute walk away from the work and then jump right back into it again. It adds up to more work, but often better work too. There’s no time for distraction, no time for anything but producing our best in that short burst of time before we earn another break.

      Every day is a series of challenges that must be overcome for us to earn the knowledge, skills or nerve to move on to the next. We climb ever higher, we get pushed back, adjust and push forward again. It’s not a long slog into infinity, it’s simply today’s short race. When we focus on the short race we’re currently working through, we think less about the short break someone else may be posting pictures about on social media, or the work someone we admire just published that feels out of reach for our current ability. We’re in a different race, after all, and our task is simply to finish this micro burst with focus and intensity.

      Zoom back out, and we see seismic shifts happening politically, economically, culturally… and it feels like this race may be too overwhelming for us to be in. But we’re in it just the same. We forget that that larger game at play isn’t our weight to bear alone. Don’t let the bastards grind you down (that’s what they want us to feel—ground down and powerless). Focus on the race we’re running and chase personal excellence in the things we alone are doing with our time. Life may indeed be a marathon and not a sprint, but all races are completed one stride at a time.

    • Holding to Reason in a Maddening World

      “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Our entire social structure is an echo chamber now. Our media is curated for us. And we curate too. We’ve reached a point where anyone we disagree with automatically gets muted or unfollowed or otherwise edited out of the stories we like to tell ourselves. And so it is that we only get one side of the story and get shocked by things like election outcomes, the erratic behavior of people we otherwise have so much in common with and the escalation of outrage. Yet it’s completely logical when we only hear one perspective.

      There are many of us who feel the United States has just descended into madness. That doesn’t mean we ourselves should descend into madness with those who engineered such things. They love it when they get a rise out of us, and go regressively deeper into despicable behavior to provoke. Don’t take the bait. We haven’t reached the low point yet, so buckle up and prepare for the next worst moment in modern democracy. Fight for all that is right in this world but always hold the high ground.

      I purchased a new American flag last week to replace the one that was old and frayed by years of flying in the elements. My flag is not a symbol of support for the current autocrats and oligarchs running my country, but a reminder of all that we once believed. I wondered whether I should take it down and put up a Gadsden flag (Don’t Tread on Me), but it’s already been coopted by the Tea Party zealots. And why give up my own country so easily? As they run this country into the ground wrapped in clever and well-funded marketing and imagery, remember the truth lies somewhere between what the most shrill voices on either side are screaming. We must hold the line with reason.

      I don’t write this with optimism, but from the perspective of someone who accepts whatever fate the universe imposes (amor fati). We don’t have to love it, but here we are. What are we going to do about it now? When they provoke for anger, answer with quiet resolve. For this is not who we are. And our collective story is still being written.

    • Breaking the Mirror

      “I wanted to act, but I’d always been convinced that actors had to be handsome. That came from the days when Errol Flynn was my idol. I’d come out of a theater and be startled when I looked in a mirror because I didn’t look like Flynn. I felt like him.” — Gene Hackman

      Gene Hackman passed away yesterday. Hearing about people who have always been there in our timeline passing away isn’t like losing a loved one, it’s more like seeing a tree we always admired knocked down in a storm, or a favorite restaurant closing. It’s a part of us, but it’s a peripheral part of our identity, not our core. And when that thing goes away, well, we realize things won’t be the same anymore. There’s a lot of that feeling going around right now.

      What is it within us that makes us believe we can do anything? What stirs within, inspiring us to rise up and slog through the early drafts of who we are towards who we might become? It’s some spark that needs fuel to ignite into something more, and then more still. But fires don’t burn in a downpour. The people we surround ourselves with either smother our dreams or feed them, and so we must be very careful about who those people are. But our worst enemy is the person in the mirror saying we don’t look like someone who can do that.

      It takes time to break that mirror. Some never do. As we grow, who we once were becomes ever more peripheral to who we are now. We climb away from that mirror and grow into a new identity, and hopefully grow further still for the rest of our days. But it all starts with believing that we can be more than the person looking back at us. The trick is to stop lingering at the mirror and get to work on who we might be next.

    • Leave a Ripple, Not a Flush

      “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.”
      —Marcus Aurelius

      I’ve had the same conversation over and over again: What the hell are we to do when the angry mob takes control, tears everything apart and then gets outraged when people are outraged by their behavior? We can have contempt for those who voted for this, or we can seek to understand what they were so damned angry about that got us here. We might feel it’s all misguided bullshit stirred up by media and foreign actors, but the world is more complicated than that. Seek first to understand…

      It’s too easy to just blame it all on stupidity alone. They aren’t stupid, many of them anyway. Why were they so angry and contemptuous? Why are they still, having gotten what they wanted? Maybe it’s because deep down they know they screwed this up and it’s now coming for them. At least it feels nice to think so. But that’s us projecting upon them. There’s entirely too much us versus them already.

      Good can be exhausting. Reason and logic in illogical times can be a slog. We must be good and reasonable anyway. This is our time to do the right thing. This is what our birth lottery gave us. Be grateful, be graceful, and be determined to be good. It will bear out in the end. We must find calmness in the storm. We must leave a ripple, not just flush it all away.

    • Reasonable Times

      “No man can predict the time when others will choose to return to reason.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      We find ourselves in unreasonable times. We know this because reason and logic are shouted down and marginalized by lusty zealots with a thirst for power, and their behavior is celebrated by their followers and enablers. When enough reasonable, logical people are shouted down, the rest learn to keep their mouths shut. That’s no way to climb the mountain of progress, it’s a spiral into chaos.

      Whether the world shifts towards order or towards chaos is largely out of our control, all we can control is how we react to the forces around us. We may choose to be reasonable (to thoughtfully use reason) ourselves. To seek first to understand and then to act in a way consistent with our climb to personal excellence (arete). There’s nothing excellent in shouting down someone we disagree with, nor is there excellence in bowing to the will of a bully or in putting our head in the sand and wishing it would all go away.

      It’s said that the universe favors chaos over order. That doesn’t mean that we should accept riots in the streets, but rather, that change is inevitable. Our own stability lies in toeing the line between chaos and order and learning how to improve our balance. This too shall pass—it always does eventually. If we put ourselves in a position to meet change prepared, antifragile and resilient, we may actually thrive on the changes. So maybe these times seem unreasonable, and really, who am I to argue? But we have agency, we have reason, and we may endeavor to hold the line that favors order in our own lives.

    • Seasonal Shifts

      “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere,” — Seamus Heaney

      “On the other side of endurance, joy waits.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      I have friends currently afloat in pristine, turquoise waters. I have other friends unsatisfied with the snowpack in their own backyards who hike seemingly every waking moment above tree line to find paradise in fickle and extreme weather conditions. I could be doing either of those things myself right now, but instead I’m holding the center that we may all meet in the middle again one day.

      We do have agency with such things as winter. We may choose to stoke the fire and watch the storms pass by from the comfort of our favorite chair, book in hand and a hot beverage to warm us from the inside out. Or we can dress the part and venture out into the swirling snows and bitter wind, to taste for ourselves the bite of January. If we have the currency of health and the accessories of winter, there’s every reason to fully experience everything winter has to offer.

      The world feels colder and darker than it’s felt in some time. These shifts are seasonal, we tell ourselves. The pendulum will swing back one day to warmer and brighter. Our mission is to toe the line between chaos and order and make the most of our days, whatever the climate. This is stoicism. This is grit. This is Sisu. Whatever we wish to call it, it’s a mindset and quiet resolve to face the day and whatever it brings to us. To hold the line and winter out the worst that we may summer it up again one day.

    • Sisu

      “The exact meaning of sisu is difficult to define. There’s no one word in the English language with a literal parallel, and even in Finnish, sisu stands for a cluster of traits that includes stoic determination, hardiness, courage, bravery, willpower, tenacity and resilience. Sisu is an action-oriented mindset: it comes into play as you take on a challenge seemingly beyond your capacity. It is called upon when adversity and opposition force you to give up and only your courage allows you to hold on.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      I’ve encountered this word, sisu, several times over the last few years. Each time I’ve told myself to write a blog post about it to explore it further, maybe in hopes of internalizing the traits that make up sisu into my own mindset. After all, I’ve been writing about stoicism for years with the same goal—surely some stoic traits have permeated the thick scull of this writer. But writing about sisu felt different because it’s not my word to write about. I’m not Finnish, and the traits that are sisu are something you display, not some clever term the marketing team can hijack.

      “An essential trait of sisu is the lack of a need to talk about it. Any kind of swagger or talking up your bravery has no place in sisu. It’s no good just saying you have sisu if you can’t show it – let your actions do the talking.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      So we aren’t talking about bravado here. Living a life more aligned with sisu feels an internal calling. An aspiration to be bold in the face of all of this crap the world is throwing at us nowadays. This is no time to be soft. This is no time to be wringing our hands and giving up. These are our days to reach for personal excellence (refer to my other favorite word; arete). We can’t very well let ourselves down now, when there’s so much at stake in our lives.

      We know that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Maybe this is the right time to finally embrace the word and simply be more stoic, be more brave and tenacious and courageous. To stoke the fire within and push through the challenges ahead. Then again, hasn’t it always been that time? We must simply rise up to meet the moment, again and again. And knowing what we now know about the word, isn’t that sisu?

    • A Fragile Walk

      On and on the rain will say
      How fragile we are how fragile we are
      — Sting, Fragile

      A woman in town walked out on the pond ice to take a picture of the moon and broke through the thin ice. She fought to get out of the frigid water, and when that failed, to hold on for help. After several minutes of struggle a rescuer had a hold of her and it felt like she would survive. But the ice broke on the rescuer and in his plunge he lost grip on the woman. Exhausted and hyperthermic she slipped under the water to her death. The rescuer, distraught and frozen, was himself rescued. I wondered what her plans were for the Saturday evening she wouldn’t live to see.

      It’s thankfully rare for someone to drown in this pond. A friend with a long memory can only recall two other incidents in the last hundred years. He had walked on the ice himself not far from where she broke through, but knew the ice better. She had simply strayed too far from the safety of thicker ice as dusk turned to dark to see the moon. Were it an hour earlier perhaps more people in the area could have made a difference.

      We all tread on fragile ground. Memento mori. Our duty is to recognize this and optimize the time we have left. Don’t fear dying, fear not living while we may.