And from what we know, he truly saw each and every one of these obstacles as an opportunity to practice some virtue: patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice, and creativity.
L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. What’s essential is invisible to the eye.
Because like Epicurus says, nothing is unending. You just need to be strong and gracious enough to get through it.
Marcus Aurelius had a version of this exercise where he’d describe glamorous or expensive things without their euphemisms – roasted meat is a dead animal and vintage wine is old, fermented grapes. The aim was to see these things as they really are, without any of the ornamentation. We.
Think about the areas of your life where you are under duress or weighed down by obligation. What are the choices available to you, day after day? You might be surprised at how many there actually are.
It’s not enough to just not do evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best you can.
No one gets to enjoy their own legacy – by definition.
If a person puts even one measure of effort into following ritual and the standards of righteousness, he will get back twice as much. – XUNZI.
It means accepting that others might be more qualified or specialized in areas in which you considered yourself competent – or at least their time is better spent on them than yours.
If something is in our control, it’s worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is not one of those things – it is not in our control how long we will live or what will come and take us from life.
That’s what the canvas strategy is about – helping yourself by helping others. Making a concerted effort to trade your short-term gratification for a longer-term payoff. Whereas everyone else wants to get credit and be “respected,” you can forget credit. You can forget it so hard that you’re glad when others get it instead of you – that was your aim, after all.
What made the Mongols different was their ability to weigh each situation objectively, and if need be, swap out previous practices for new ones.
Don’t think about the end – think about surviving.
Today, make sure you take a walk. And in the future, when you get stressed or overwhelmed, take a walk. When you have a tough problem to solve or a decision to make, take a walk. When you want to be creative, take a walk. When you need to get some air, take a walk. When you have a phone call to make, take a walk. When you need some exercise, take a long walk. When you have a meeting or a friend over, take a walk together. Nourish yourself and your mind and solve your problems along the way.
What do we want more in life? That’s the question. It’s not accomplishments. It’s not popularity. It’s moments when we feel like we are enough. More presence. More clarity. More insight. More truth. More stillness.
We’re not trying to ace tests or impress teachers. We are reading and studying to live, to be good human beings – always and forever.
I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work – the chance to find yourself. – JOSEPH CONRAD.
Philosophy is simply asking us to pay careful attention and to strive to be more than a pawn. As Viktor Frankl puts it in The Will to Meaning, “Man is pushed by drives but pulled by values.
The best insights on enough come to us from the East. “When you realize there is nothing lacking,” Lao Tzu says, “the whole world belongs to you.
It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more.