Tag: stoic

Yellow Millet Dream

I’ve been researching some Daoist (I will be referring to The Dao as that not The Tao as I have done so before) stories, specifically allegories. I came across the story titled The Yellow Millet Dream about the scholar and poet Lu Dongbin who lived in China around thirteen-hundred years ago – for how long, who knows as it is said that he lived for centuries. Lu, like Seneca of the Stoics, didn’t seem to fit the stereotypical mould of being the straight-faced, emotionless zen character. Instead, he was a partying ladies man whose wisdom was so fantastic that he was elevated to immortality, being declared one of the Eight Immortals. Whether or not this is literal immortality, spiritual in some astral form, or metaphorical through his works depends on belief.

What I find to be quite comforting is that every one of the Eight Immortals in Daoism have their own flaws and quirks, making them ultimately as organic and imperfect as the rest of us. It makes sense doesn’t it? Instead of being perfect, we work towards it but sometimes we cannot escape our nature and if a thing is in our nature then it is something to accept and nurture humanely that benefits the common good. Obviously if your imperfection is a hankering for human flesh and genocide then I’m sure you can find a better outlet in perfecting beef tartare or acting where at least you can bring joy through method acting, I suppose. We are, ultimately, the universe experiencing itself following The Dao and therefore, all is as it should be, or rather in it’s nature to work towards harmony and balance within its own ability and self.

However I’m digressing. Lu Dongbin, before he was warding off the dark with a sword of protection or mastering his internal alchemy, he was simply Lu Yan, a travelling poet.

He met an older man, a Daoist, at an inn. He dozed off while the dinner – millet -was cooking on the fire.

When he awoke, he left the village and went to town where he took and passed the imperial exam. He worked hard and was promoted again and again, soon becoming a minister in the government and marrying a rich wife, then becoming prime minister. His success attracted enemies, and he was betrayed, lost his friends, lost his office, his wife, his fortune and his children. Dying of poverty he awoke to discover that although he thought 18 years had passed, it was just a dream, and the millet was just coming to a boil.

The elderly Daoist caused him to have this dream so that he could learn an important lesson about life.

The lesson, of course, is that the material is immaterial. Success as defined by society does not grant any meaningful happiness based on itself alone. While recently a study came out to say that money can indeed buy happiness, if your unhappiness is caused by a lack of meaningful human connection, throwing money at the problem may not be the best way to go about it. Sure you can get yourself a ticket on a singles cruise to the Bahamas but if you do not look within first for help, you may end up staying in your cabin watching Too Hot To Handle crying into your silk monogrammed hankies.

Success is like beauty and exists within the eye of the beholder but sometimes – if not all the time – the world around us tries to gaslight us into thinking otherwise. Perhaps it happens to us all without even realising it, so then, I suppose, the real trick is to take the time and ask the question:

Am I dreaming?

Z3N0

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Great Teaching

Today I was entertained by no end by a little saga going on over on Twitter. Yes, you can say this whole segment that I’m about to write is in direct contradiction to the post that I’ve made previously criticising the human need to find entertainment from other’s suffering. But, and it’s a big butt: I’m also a fan of justice and not just any kind, specifically poetic justice with comedy that Armando Iannucci would struggle to come up with on his own.

I’m not a fan of social media at the best of times but there seems to be such delicious irony that one of the world’s richest and most identifiable individuals who uses Twitter as a staging ground for open ideological warfare has suddenly come to the realisation that people have been telling him and others like him for years. Perhaps that’s the lesson, no? We cannot ultimately teach someone anything effectively until they face the greatest teacher of all: a mistake.

For those who are not aware of this drama, Elon Musk engaged in a public dispute with an employee about job performance, during which the employee was notified by HR that he had been fired. As it turned out, the employee in question was hired as part of a contract in the purchasing of a company that was originally owned by that employee. Mr Musk then changed his mind about the firing as shown above in the linked tweet. I’m not going to speculate on what kind of legal and financial ramifications were happening behind the scenes but I think it’s worth pointing out how this situation could have been avoided entirely.

“Accept humbly, let go easily.” – Meditations 8.33

Perhaps then we can argue that the negative public perception of Elon Musk outside of his core fan base is wrong in itself. Of course, we can find things detestable about a person’s character based on the simple dynamics of virtue and vices but what are vices but demonstrations of lessons to be learned? I for one, think that a lesson was learned here – or rather I hope it was. I’m not above harbouring negative feelings towards people, it’s human nature to react instinctively to all kinds of threats whether they are physical or philosophical. In 2023, billions of us across the globe have access to social media platforms where we can respond immediately on instinct to such threats without much thought. We would hope that the new CEO of one of the world’s biggest would take a little more care about giving into those instincts but why would we hold anyone to a higher standard of self-control or moral responsibility due to the size of the bank account? History tells us that morality and judgement rarely go hand-in-hand with extreme wealth so why would we expect otherwise now?

Ultimately, the mistake and reflection of the mistake will be the only way forward for everyone. Anyone who’s ever made a silly post on Facebook that they regret or written a poorly thought out, two-hundred character rant about Love Island that has the slight flavour of implied sexism, will eventually have to deal with and learn from the consequences of impulse. This, of course, extends far beyond the digital confines of social media, just ask Cain after he bashed in Abel’s skull. Never before in human history has one badly thought out response or opinion been able to reach and be seen by so many, and in turn, effect so many. I suppose that’s why we have age-restrictions on social media (as useless as they are) to at least keep up the appearance that young people will have a chance to develop some sense of self-control before being bestowed the power of connecting with the world.

In the end, I’m not sure if Mr Musk will learn from this situation and excise a little more self-control or at least develop that faculty before engaging in high level business in such a potentially destructive way. I like to think that maybe there will be but it was my favourite Roman emperor who said: teach or tolerate. If consequences won’t do, I suppose I’ll have to be contented to watch – like the passive media consumer that I am from the sidelines -, tolerating and having a giggle at the comedy.

I’m not unhappy with that outcome, popcorn is my favourite snack.

Z3N0

In the Ring

I was scrolling through TikTok as I tend to on the bus home and came across some kind of strange social media star drama. Much like the KSI versus Logan Paul situation, this one was two OnlyFans content creators shouting at each other and leading to organizing a boxing match. My question is – as it was with the Youtuber boxing – why?

I may have spoken about this before, yet is this what we are as a species? In schools, children are taught to use words not fists yet it’s becoming culturally acceptable for celebrities to beef it out in the boxing ring to settle their scores. It’s the hypocrisy of our time, violence is both loved and hated. Or perhaps it’s only loved when corporations are sponsoring. Of course, with that statement, we could talk just as easily about the war in Ukraine: violence to defend a nation from invaders; yet are we looking at that with glorification or a dutiful necessity (depending on whose side you are on, of course) compared to rich socialites knocking seven-shades of shit out of each other over a spat on Twitter.

That comparison disappoints me. Not for making it but for the implications of what it means for our attention. Celebrities slapping each other at award shows, comedians tackled for edgy laughs, and dancers on TikTok throwing sponsored punches to cheers – are we so bored? Is the world of those who are privileged so without violence that we celebrate it while schools are mined to Europe’s east, famine continues in Yemen, and jihadists pillage their way across Burkina Faso carrying a very strange definition of divinity.

It’s a fundamentally first world problem that we’ve seen before. Even Seneca questioned the point of the gladiator pits, much preferring a good romp or dinner party to solve his problems. I read somewhere that humans, by their nature as the apex predators of Earth are naturally violent and territorial but surely over the last several thousand years of human history we can see that the blooming of art, culture and science happens best in peacetime. Sure you can make the argument that we wouldn’t have nuclear power if it wasn’t for the Manhattan Project but did we need the bomb to land on Hiroshima to get to that conclusion? Marie Curie’s work would have been continued into radioactivity and energy regardless of the production of weapons of mass destruction or not.

Just this morning, being the last to know about these things, I hear that a former Love Island/boxer, Tommy Fury, has beaten YouTuber, Jake Paul, in the ring. The commentators were going wild and I felt a little left out as I had no idea what the appeal was. Yet, perhaps, I’m a hypocrite. I grew up on the hyper-violence of films like Kill Bill, Silence of the Lambs, and even kids shows that glorified punching like The Batman. I loved them all and still do. Ultimately, then, is it entirely pointless to question our violent nature? Seneca himself committed violence with words with intent to harm within his politics and praised shrewd statesmen who would make Machiavelli blush.

Where’s the line then, I wonder. As a collective, where do we think the line should be for enjoying the spectacle of violence? Should it stop just after the next episode of The Last of Us and before watching first hand someone get sucker punched on the train when travelling through Doncaster? Or should we commit to a world where we exist entirely in the land of Stardew Valley where everyone is nice and we grow plants and give each other conch shells.

It’s such a shame that I’m boring myself just thinking about it.

Z3N0

Sudden and Unexpected

A received a tearful call tonight informing me that the young son of a family friend had been killed in a car accident earlier this afternoon.

We weren’t close yet in these moments all I can remember are the days when we were both at school. I was a few years older and asked to look out for him when he started big school. He never needed looking out for, he was far savvier than I ever was even at that young age.

I think about the lessons taken from Marcus Aurelius and the philosophers and wonder if in the face of sudden and unexpected death we can ever truly practice what we preach. It’s a twisting of the gut that I can’t rationalize.

Einstein said that there is no death – not really. All of space and time were created all at once; destiny is and was always set in stone. There is no death because as we travel across this oceanic landscape of space-time, nothing is ever really gone. We all have been dead for trillions of years and are yet to be born for aeons more. Is that comforting to say or to feel?

A little distance perhaps from the immediate family affords me the privilege of a little naval gazing rather than crying. While millions across the world – and billions throughout history – have lost a child, the reality of it still doesn’t strike as logical or aligned with some natural order of things.

What is the natural order of things?

I was in a bar yesterday discussing happiness with a man who, in a past life, found himself living with Buddhist monks.

“What is happiness?” – X

“Fulfilment I suppose, an acceptance.” – Z

“What is acceptance?” – X

Well? What is acceptance?

When we are happy, we can say nothing affects us, or we’d all be taken with the wind like a limp tree. Yet what is acceptance? Is it accepting people on the bus playing music too loud or is it acceptance with the blind faith of the natural order that would kill a young man barely twenty with a bright future?

Marcus Aurelius writes that the griever’s problem is not mine since I would be carried away with the same grief. Yet apathy is the enemy of humanity, and we live for each other and mourn for each other the same way.

It’s an interesting conundrum and an emotional tightrope walk.

I feel loss, that’s perhaps the only way I can describe my emotions. It’s a hollow cold feeling. It pulls downwards like a heavy crown of ice. My feelings don’t bother me though.

The well-being of his parents bothers me.

Another futile projection perhaps. I’m miles away and neither my presence nor words could bring much comfort.

While being both sudden and unexpected, loss brings a minefield of conflicting thoughts and emotions. I suppose then, we can never truly be prepared beyond our own impressions of what could be.

Loss. Such a familiar word and experience to humanity yet so sudden and unexpected every time.

I have no final words of wisdom nor concluding sign-off. I’ve yet to come to any conclusion on how to react or feel appropriately. Perhaps when I figure it out I’ll add an addendum.

What Can You Do?

I was reading today that the Loire in France is drying up in places and that three nuclear power plants rely on its water for cooling. Sometimes, I think that my urges to play Fallout: New Vegas come not from a deep desire to escape my step-brother’s yellow bell pepper bolognese dinners, but from divine intervention to teach me how to prepare mutant gecko steaks.

As much as we crave individual liberty and the ideals of a libertarian society, human civilisation as we know it is wholly collectivist. Look no further than the gas shortages and the grain blackmail to see that whether we like it or not, humanity relies on each other to survive. So then, I ask, what can the individual do to put not just their mind at ease but also actively impact the world around them?

“Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They’ll hate you for it, but that’s the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice.” – Alfred Pennyworth, The Dark Knight (2008)

Be Batman? Yes but also no.

Latex nipples and gruff voices aside, that quote from The Dark Knight can easily be applied directly to you. Change the word “Batman” to “human” and there you have it. The purpose of individual liberty is laid bare: the choice to make the right choice. Whether that means grinning and baring yellow bell peppers in bolognese or standing on a picket line as the person you voted into office slanders you to millions.

It’s ironic that Christopher Nolan’s trilogy ended up being as strange love letters to authoritarianism and thinly-veiled fascist ideologues.

I suppose in these last few months where the world has seemed to time travel backwards to the Cold War, with nuclear panic and purging of women’s rights, keeping your head seems to be the only real victory worth living for. We may be broke, depressed and suffering through one modern crisis after the next yet we are unbroken still; no matter how hard edgy, rage-fueled cokeheads in office and podcast booths try to destroy all that they do not understand or care about.

“‘No thief can steal your will.’ – So Epictetus.” – Meditations, 11.36

In a time where history tells us we’ve never had it so easy yet the victories of the individual remain the same as they did millennia ago.

“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.” – Meditations, 7.69

Prosperous Journeys

I was watching Ryan Holiday’s videos again and he told the story of Zeno – the proper one – and his process in founding the stoic school of thought. It got me thinking about my own journey and perhaps perspective on the collective journeys of us all. It reaffirmed to me the purpose of the philosophy, one that has become almost a reflexive action: a innate moral code much that I can’t break from like a kind of happy programming. I’m sure Jordan Peterson would have something to say about that but I’ve always been more of a fan of Obi-wan Kenobi when it comes to worldview.

So, the story of Zeno starts in Greece two thousand or so years ago. He was from a wealthy merchant family that moved between the island city states. It was decided – by him or circumstance – that the business would be moved to Athens which required putting all of the stock and money on board the one ship. I’m sure they could have done it in a few trips but why bother when one would manage just fine? In a sudden storm, Zeno was shipwrecked and lost everything aside from his own skin. Yet years later, looking back on this devastating loss, he described this as a ‘prosperous journey‘.

Well, not all of us can be so fucking glib, you may say. Well, I’ll tell you another story – warning: some grossness.

During my GCSE year at school, I was not doing well at all in Maths. I was put in a intervention class to secure a C Grade. As it turns out, pretending to know what’s going on can only get you so far so, of course, discovering that I couldn’t really tell the time from an analogue clock at 16 was an interesting experience. In this class, a girl sat in front of me and one day she lifted her hair up from the back of her neck and started scratching at a nasty looking case of psoriasis. She scratched a wad of dead skin into her hands and with a cheeky grin, turned around and decided to blow it all into my face. Never in my life have I worked so hard to pass anything to get out of that class.

So then, my experience of classroom biological warfare was prosperous.

Obviously a different catalyst to pass my Maths GCSE would have been kinder but as Jagger said, you can’t always get what you want.

Now, in my life, I am coming to an end of a rut. A year of headaches and constriction has only eleven weeks left to it before I am off to start a new chapter. Without this year, I don’t think I would have come to the same conclusions, learned the same lessons or be the same person. I am even grateful for a failed attempt at romance that lasted for half of that time.

I keep coming back to the same lessons: the Code of Jagger, the Law of Rolling Stones, etc. I don’t mind repeating myself. I hope whoever reading this doesn’t mind either. Alas:

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find, you get what you need.

Obviously, that’s easier said than done. Or is it?

… yes it is, but you’ve got this.

Z3N0

Pastures New

I’ve been away for a while thanks to work, hobbies and writing. Life has found its way to keep me on my toes and busy enough to be able to shy away from the crushing sense of loneliness that I so smugly dismissed over Christmas time. To be fair to my past self, I had Hugh Grant movies on repeat.

I discovered a great tragedy of time that actually I found to be very amusing. I have spent two years achieving a qualification that is entirely irrelevant to the process of what my true goals are. In the stoic sense, the momento mori that ticks of the days of my life to the end would feel rather pointless. Wasted and lost, my early twenties swallowed up by a smug and dismissive management structure. While yes I did find love of a romantic sense in this time, I now suffer from that irritating curse of what I very much believe to be unrequited love and am stuck in a situation of silence. Yet, even as I see my money dwindle on piss-poor pay and my mental health decline from having to re-live my teenage years living with my parents, I find the whole thing rather darkly funny.

As I look over at pastures new, my application processes in the works and hope in my heart, I feel nothing but a profound sense of amusement.

You could, I suppose, chalk it up to divine timing. We could say that we all experience years of being stuck in ourselves, trapped in our own paradigms until the tipping point. When we reach this point, we look back and laugh and how silly the whole thing was in the first place. But would I give the time back? Would I hop in my TARDIS and change my own timeline for a more streamlined life experience? No of course not.

That’s the funny thing, even more so than how little my current applications care about the two years of work. It’s the acceptance I feel. Perhaps it is a universal experience regarding how we look back on our lives not with regret but a bemused shrug, if not pride at least. Then we can ask ourselves, I suppose, even in stagnation are we ever really stagnating or just slow-moving. Each day we make progress as small as it seems. I’ve spoken about this before, this phenomenon but I think that each time I’m reminded of it, it’s worth mentioning. Not just for me, but for whoever reads this.

“What is your profession? Being a good man.” – Meditations 11.5

Despite the dead-end job and the laughable excuse of a pay-scale, and the shitshow that is finding a life partner in 2022, Marcus Aurelius here, still 1842 years after his death, is right. It doesn’t matter what we do as long as we can say we are doing our best in each moment to be the best we can be.

So, in my final thoughts after my hiatus, I ask of you, the reader to ask yourself to be the best you can be. If you are doing anything in your life just doing your best and trying to be your best is all anyone or anything – divine or otherwise – can ask of you.

Between you and me, if being your best means napping for at least three hours a day to attempt that, then I salute you. I need at least an hour, myself.

Z3N0

Hello Old Friend

I suppose that it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I suppose that’s on me, I have been distracted with trying to live the socially and emotionally invested life full of romance and optimistic visions of love and unity. Alas, at this time, it was a failure and it has faded into obscurity as if I was trying to catch fog with a net.

“It is clear to you, I know, Lucillius, that one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings wisdom make life bearable.”

Yet, I seemed to forget in my fumbling in the world of Love Actually the following passage that came in the next sentence:

“Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already.” – Letters from a Stoic, XVI

In a sense, it seems that in my hastiness to apply the knowledge and wisdom that I have learnt over my years of readings and reflecting, that I have forgotten to keep going. It’s almost as if my brain – or rather just me – retired from it all at the first glimpse of hopeful domestic bliss as if I had come to the end. There I was, as George W. Bush full of strange vacant smiles waving the flag to claim that the mission was accomplished.

A pattern is forming, I think across the board in all my relationships as I have to watch myself like a hawk: I’m either entirely disinterested in the maintenance of the thing and disturbed by a glimmer of intimacy or deeper understanding, or enraptured with the whole thing.

I’m finding myself a binary being of either off’s or on’s when it comes to enjoying the company of others and following another rather disappointing ending of things, I’m leaning to the off switch. There are no mistakes, of course, we have to remember that as a point of not just stoicism but Buddhism and Taoism and even the Abrahamic faiths and I’ve spoken to no end about that before. Yet here I am, understanding and observing the familiar pattern of my own behaviour, breaking it down and analyzing each piece of it still strangely uncomfortable. Reason dictates that, as we know, there is no ignorance, there is knowledge, yet I feel ignorant all the same.

I was reading recently about Cixin Lui’s Dark Forest novel and the eponymous principle of existential cosmic horror. It states the universe is a finite dark forest with a finite amount of space and resources. Each civilisation within it is a dark hunter, moving as silently as they can to not be detected: a kind of Hunger Games if you will, of cosmic proportions. It speaks of the dread we feel in the dark, hiding from each other and ourselves, watching and waiting with a quietened breath to what will happen next or who will strike. It’s almost as if, I play this game – or perhaps we all do – with the universe, or Allah or Yahweh or God or Brahman or The Dao, on an individual level. A level of deep apprehension and tension with the cosmos: a gunslinging showdown with destiny seeing who will blink first.

Or perhaps I’m being a miserly fart who just got dumped and I’m sour at Fate and all it brings. In another sense, it’s a kindness to be given a new perspective and a new breath of inspiration to reflect and turn inwards. It’s a silent companion we all have: the ability to turn inwards and talk to ourselves intimately the way no one else is allowed to do. Solitude is a gift granted so rarely in the 21st Century that we should smile and say thank you.

Hello old friend, and thank you.

Z3N0

Identity

I was in an art class a few weeks ago discussing the topic of identity. This particular little thing took me a lot longer than everyone else it seemed and seemed to consume my thoughts at home with a need for just the right felt tip pens to finish it off. It was a breathe of fresh air after being confronted with weeks of writer’s block and a near total lack of creative and philosophical inspiration. Perhaps it’s true what my old friend from university said that I miss the visual creativity and my subconscious is crying out for a return to the media. Or perhaps it was a precursor to a conversation I had days after beginning this project with someone I care about very much. This person, following a mental break, reflects and makes art from what they were feeling at the time, finding it near impossible to verbalize feeling like a ‘snail mushroom’.

Strange how an oversized doodle is the only thing that has brought me any real creative interest over the past fortnight as the days become shorter and the nights become a little more restless each day. What then, can I learn from my own expression of identity aside from being a big nerd with a thing for sci-fi?

I ask myself this, in the stoic sense: what purpose does my action serve? Or perhaps, when it comes to writing on philosophy or creativity, what does my inaction serve? My mind moving from one little project to the next, drifting through thought processes in a fever dream of obscure fleeting ideas. I am comforted, however, as should you be, that everything in a rut has been experienced before and will continue to be experienced by the human nature. Which is almost ingrained in our identity as Star Wars references are ingrained in mine. I tell people all the time who claim to be feeling alone that they are not truly alone in what they are feeling as otherwise words would not exist for it in the first place. Obviously, feeling like a ‘mushroom snail’ is a little more niche which requires some other advice for that one but you get my point.

We drift through this existence always, as I have been drifting in my own. I think back to the advice from a friend: where is your action. I ask myself this, but then I ask, what is in my nature to act for and what does that mean for who I am? It’s something we all need to ask ourselves, isn’t it? Who we are before we act. Or perhaps alternatively, it is what we chose to act upon and how we act that defines our identity more than our innate being itself.

I was reading a few weeks ago that events and personality traits formed from events leave markers on DNA and can be passed through to offspring. So if a person is identifiably callous, the child shall have traits of callousness. It seemed a bit questionable and sparked another internal debate about condition versus nature. Going back to my own pseudo-theory that:

Biology + Condition = Person

So I look to my doodle, one that I seemed to spend so much time on when I could have been mind mapping ideas for short stories, full length novels and screenplays. I see perhaps only 2 things within it that relate to biological function rather than condition. Those being: the representation of sexual identity and the constellation of Taurus, showing my birthdate (vaguely). Or perhaps, I am being cynical of my own development, claiming to be a being entirely made of other people’s creations and influence. Perhaps the stack of books under my coffee of the philosophers and spiritual leaders are a biological factor. Perhaps human nature is instinctively driven to search for meaning, for the divine path, for the harmony with The Way and all of its manifestations. Perhaps that’s the point of this very minor exercise, to reflect on that fundamental truth that all things we experience as human beings are in our nature to experience and come together as ultimately the collective human identity as well as the identity of the individual. Each element representing a deeper complexity from the strange fascination with the unknown represented by Cthulu to the desire to explore and find purpose in the stars with the U.S.S Voyager.

Or perhaps, it’s really not that deep and doodling at work to stop me from counting the ceiling tiles over and over again is just that. Who knows, give it a try for yourself, let me know what you find. If anything to save you from counting ceiling tiles.

The Tao: Chapter VIII

The Tao Te Ching has inspired me to realise some core truths about what matters and what does not in the spiritual sense more so than the rational philosophical. Yet perhaps that’s a bit of a fluff announcement in itself considering how the two were never mutually exclusive. There is a sense of great foundation in the 8th chapter, clearer perhaps to a layman than the other musings that have come before – some interesting things about the universe being inherently female is one but that’s another discussion in itself.

“In a home it is the site that matters; In quality of mind it is depth that matters; In an ally it is benevolence that matters; In speech it is good faith that matters; In government it is order that matters; In affairs it is ability that matters; In action it is timeliness that matters.” – Tao Te Ching, VIII

It’s rather to the point and as someone who has been criticised (or envied, depending on who you ask) for their pragmatism and bluntness, I rather appreciate its straightforwardness. It’s wholly beautiful, a code that requires few words and few interpretations to be understood.

In regards to the home, in my interpretation, the “site” refers to the foundations and environment. Homes are not houses and such, here we can say either this is in regards to a physical place or the family. Foundations of equality, balance, harmony and truth are the sticking posts of this structure, its confines filled with love stronger than concrete.

The depth of mind for me is comparable to the epithet from the Jedi friends: there is no ignorance, there is knowledge. A shallow mind is a stagnant one like a puddle. Quality is found in the growth and endless vastness; the ability to learn and expand beyond its own perceived horizons with infinite potential – a potential every human has access to if we just dare to see ourselves.

When it comes to allies, I’ve spoken about the stoic discussions of friendship before, specifically from Seneca. The same rings true here, in benevolence we find an ally and friend. That is the only motivation of a companionship: benevolence outwards and inwards, any relationship made to serve or fulfil a need other than the sake of friendship itself is fickle and flawed.

Now we come to the part that is less relevant perhaps to those not in office: government. I suppose it’s true though to an extent, anyone who watched the scenes coming out of Washington DC on January 6th would agree that chaos breeds chaos. An ordered mind, an ordered government is the only way to properly govern. Sure, the separation of church and state is important to ensuring the priorities of the people but so should there be a separation of self and state, because its not a career for the individual but a vocation of the communal – a shared responsibility that’s one for the greater good of everyone not just the few or fickle.

When we speak about affairs we speak about what we chose to do in our lives. For example, in my own affairs, it would be quite dim to decide to become a maths tutor when I’m not really good at maths nor do I like doing it. Ability and affairs are what we speak about when we talk about our natures in stoicism and what is true to our individual nature and what are we doing to enable we can live according to our greatest good in alignment with the greatest good of the collective humanity.

Finally, this line reminds me of the quote of Marcus Aurelius about never acting in a way that would be cause for regret. Action, while we can be actively passive, is required and necessary. If you a believer in divine timing and Providence, no action happens outside of when it is meant to, even your own. Living every day as it is your last, without some mad panic that the terrible “live, love, laugh” wall signs would have you believe is a good start. Even perhaps today you say, not today and you stay in bed, you are choosing to take that action and that’s fair enough. But if you decide to rush out of bed to get on a plane to take yourself off into the unknown chasing love and life, no time is the wrong time.

Z3N0