Our Will

What a truth it is that you are a result of your will. Your body is molded by diet and exercise, your mind by your will to focus and learn, and your finances by your daily labor and spending. All of these actions are within your direct control if you will grab the reigns. Who is your master? If you are unable to control that which sits within your own mind, what hope is there? Be a master of your own mind and you will make progress towards being the master of your world.  

Yes, the odds are stacked against you. I'm sorry, but that's life. Put your head down. Work. 

Kerryn Feehan on my Big Fat Fabulous Life

Isn't that about as Stoic as you can get? We all, in our various ways, and some more than others, have the odds stacked against us. For better or worse, we are born at certain times, to certain parents under certain conditions all completely out of our control. The person with every opportunity in the world is incapable of self-control and unable to establish their own life. The person born into poverty, racism, and political instability is able to rise up and create their own good life both large and small. This isn't about material success, but about the success that comes from putting your head down and doing the work: marriage, family, learning, friends, work, diet, etc. We all have to do the work regardless of where we are in life. What is the alternative? Is it an alternative to simply give in to every urge, every lazy offering of our culture that wants to turn us into payment methods?

When you are faced with a moment of decision, which is a hundred times a day, what decision do you make? There are times when it is nearly always the wrong one: Yes, sure, I will have the bottomless fries with that. Your life is the accumulation of thousands of decisions both large and small. What do you use to make those decisions? Where do you hold the responsibility for where you find yourself today? What path can you start following? Be well.

Discipline

Discipline in all things: love, work, exercise, diet, learning, etc. Doing the right thing often means doing the more difficult. When in doubt, do the hard thing and 9 out of 10 times it will be the right thing.  

How often does that easy thing today have a high price tomorrow? Better to exercise one's discipline today than suffer the consequences of our laziness, inattention, and self indulgence tomorrow. As you go through your day, how many opportunities are there to flex the muscle of discipline? Too many to count because it is so easy to say yes to yourself when you should learn to say no. No to the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Say yes to the seven virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope and charity. Christian yes, but wise nevertheless. As Seneca said, to paraphrase: take your wisdom where you find it. Wise is wise. Be well. 

ICMM

There is no one you can name who knows how he began to want what he now wants. People are not led by their intentions but jerked about by whims. Sometimes we make the best of fortune, but just as often fortune gets the better of us. It is shameful to drift rather than to go forward; shameful to find oneself in the midst of a whirlwind of events and ask, astonished, "How did I get here?"

Letters on Ethics

Seneca

When my daughter was in elementary school, she received a certificate that stated: I Can Manage Myself (ICMM). I recall it well because I put the same acronym on a sign above my desk. Isn't that one of the most obvious requirements of an adult, of a rational person, that they will have the capacity to manage their own lives, make plans, and follow through on them? How do we make those plans? What do we use to guide their creation? Philosophy. We need a filter, philosophy, to separate out what is irrational so that we are not wasting our lives in pursuit of the trivial. Yes, we all want to have meaningful jobs but not for the purpose of impressing our high school classmates or submitting to the will of our family.

We don't want to spend our lives buying impressive consumer goods to create the impression we are successful. We don't want to spend our lives managing impressions on Facebook while our "real" lives are in a shambles. Life is a serious business so we should do more research on how to live than on how to boil an egg or buy a pair of boots. 

Don't find yourself sitting in the middle of a room full of "whims" wondering what it was all about. Be well.  

Our Time

Your ability to control your thoughts--treat it with respect. It's all that protects your mind from false perceptions--false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It's what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

It's December 31st and time to think about the past year and the one to come. What did you do and what can you do better? Did you waste time thinking about things that were out of your control and too little time focused on those things within your control? Did you work to control that one thing completely within your realm: your mind? 

It's an opportunity to survey how much time was wasted on trivial distractions versus meaningful progress towards the good. There is plenty of time in a given year to accomplish much if one spends one's time wisely, if one takes charge of one's time. One objective will be to use my time wisely and not let a day slip by without making progress on something. No more wasted days. For in those days, one upon another, is our lives. We bother over $20, but will let an entire day slip away without a trace.

My goal for 2018 is to use my time more wisely. To do things that may be difficult, but will leave behind something of value such as a stronger mind and body. Be well.

Create Your Own Christmas

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Epictetus

That's about it isn't it, that's the core of this thing called Stoicism. Separate the events in your life into two distinct areas, those in your control and those out of your control. It sounds so simple, but how often do we get lost in that distinction. Here are the holidays, Christmas is almost upon us, and the big issue is our expectations of how things should be rather than how they are. We even distort the past to paint the present in a certain way. There were those wonderful Christmases we had so long ago that will never be again. Maybe so... I tend to think we color them in two ways, both of them wrong. Either they were these bright, happy days with family and friends and fat gooses (does anyone eat a goose nowadays?), or they were these sad days because the family was apart, the goose was gone, and, perhaps, we were alone. We tend to romanticize both versions: it was never really as good or as bad as we remember. (Note: I am just thinking about normal bad times here, not those times that end up being a Netflix series or drive new legislation.) 

Never mind all the issues around the commercialization of Christmas, the buy, buy as the path to happiness. What gets me is the selling of the emotional side, the way it has of making people feel worse on December 25th even if everything is perfectly fine. We expect the rosy cheeked kids opening presents in front of a glowing fireplace while the white, cardigan clad grandparents sit watching. I like the "Trailer Park Boys" image better: Wouldn't we all rather be home getting stoned and drunk with our families. It all comes down to expectations... We can't create that Norman Rockwell scene that has been so oversold and puts everyone into debt both financially and, more importantly, emotionally. But, we can take advantage of a few days off from work and the opportunity to get stoned and drunk with our families and friends.

The important thing is that, regardless of our circumstances, we do have our will to find happiness (contentment, might be the better word), by doing something other than feeling sorry for ourselves. Don't allow that fantasy to slip in of how things are supposed to be, they are the way they are which is a gift.  We can use our will to share what we have and spend time with others that might not be our families. There are people that would rather hide for the entire holiday because they have this fantasy of how it should be. Maybe you won't be with the rich grandparents showering you with gifts (would anyone care for a Lexus?), or be the rich grandparents doing the showering. But, remember, you have something to give. Find someone to share a moment with. If you are sitting alone thinking of other times or imagining something that never was, you need to explore that with every ounce of Stoicism at your disposal. If there is anytime of year that requires a philosophy, it's this week from Christmas to New Year.

Regardless, I am hoping things go on sale on Tuesday! I need some new boots. Be well.

Good Fortune

I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.

But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions. 

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

In time, when youth has long passed, you have a chance to look back at your life and realize those moments when choices were made. There were times when you had a chance to choose one path among many. There were those easy paths that allowed you to continue on without much effort, and then those difficult ones that were a challenge, that required change and uncertainty. If we add all of those choices together, we end up with the life we have today. The guide for those choices should be virtue rather than pleasure, the desire to do the good, the right thing, and often the more difficult one. There is no mystery between good and bad because we all know the difference. As it has been said, by who I can't remember, "When in doubt do the right thing because we all know what the right thing is." With the word fortune, I am not talking about possessions in all their forms, but, no doubt there is some of that. There is of course the unvirtuous man with great wealth but that is a different story. It goes without saying that good fortune comes in many forms, but in the end the key to the two words, "good fortune" is the word "good" because the fortune, if it is worthy, must be good. Fortune, is our present situation. Is it good, or are we stuck with an empty life filled with empty pleasures. Are we petty, angry, jealous, unloved, alone, without the fortune that can come only from love? Love of others, love of ourselves. We come to that fortune of a good life by a thousand choices so that in the end someone who made different choices will look upon that person with good fortune as lucky. 

What is the path you are on, and is it an easy one or one that requires some effort? Luck isn't easy, it turns out that it can be a lot of work. It requires attention.

There was a farmer that had a gorgeous farm. He was walking along a fence checking each post for rot when a man approached him. The man asked if this was the farmer's farm? The farmer replied that it was. 

The man stood there and saw the white, sturdy fence surrounding a pasture with cows. Up the road there was a large barn with various pieces of equipment around it and beyond that a white house surrounded by trees with a large porch. He took it all in and turned to the man and said, "The lord has surely blessed you with good fortune." 

The farmer replied, "Well, maybe so, but it sure was a mess when he blessed me with it."

And so is life. We are given everything we need, the raw material of good fortune, our farm, and it is up to us what we mold with it. Be well.

Is Change an Illusion?

This too is one of the evils of foolishness: it is always beginning to live.

Epicurus as quoted by Seneca

This brings up the question of whether or not it is possible to change by simply flipping a switch in one's mind and taking a different path. If I put together some grand plan and set a date for a change, is that a foolish path? It seems I am always thinking of some change, but often lack the discipline to follow through and take the steps needed. In the real world, yes, I go through the steps to reach a goal, but what of the world of the mind? How often do I go down a mental path but fail to stay on that path. 

What is wisdom? Always wanting the same thing, always rejecting the same thing. You do not even have to add the proviso that what you want should be right: only for the right can one have a consistent wish.

Seneca, Letters on Ethics #20

Thoreau warns of activities that require new clothes because too often they also require a different man. Do different ideas require a new suit? More to come...