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stories are the bones of everything

stoicism

More than a selfie

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“You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” —Epictetus, Discourses, 3.1.39b– 40a

Every little choice adds up. It may not seem like there is a huge difference whether you spend the next half hour watching TV or going outside to find something beautiful to photograph. Twenty years from now you won’t remember the TV show. If you took the picture and framed it to hang on the wall, chances are that you will have an anchor point in time that draws you right back into whatever moment it was that you captured two decades ago. Those little anchor points are what determine whether your life has real meaning.

If you ask 100 people what gives their life meaning you will likely get 100 answers. In order to create meaning in your life, a sense of purpose is key. Meaning doesn’t just happen. It is created through narratives. You are in control of the narrative of your life, and that control is represented in thousands of choices that your brain makes every day. What you put in your mouth and what you put in your head determine who you become, and what the arc of your existence looks like.

Modern life tends to present too many choices, most of which are like fast food. They taste great but ultimately leave you feeling unsatisfied because the content isn’t healthy. It isn’t healthy because it generates no meaningful sense of purpose. The online game World of Warcraft is an example. The game allows you to create characters who inhabit a fantasy universe that is fun to explore and full of interesting creatures you can kill or be killed by. The game has its own economy and system for ranking players. Creating an avatar is fun. Entering a massive world full of other people who are exploring it along with you using their own avatars is fun. You even have a sense of purpose at first. Your avatar grows in power and gains skills. You can buy magic armor and weapons to aid you in completing quests throughout the game’s imaginary world. The problem with World of Warcraft is that the more you give, the more it takes. To get your avatar to the highest level possible takes an investment of hundreds if not thousands of hours of your life, as well as paying the fees to continue playing month after month. Let’s say you have the time, funds and motivation to climb the game’s ladder all the way to the top. What now? Your reward is that you’ve sunk hundreds to thousands of hours into becoming…what exactly?

You’ve solved no problems in your real world life. You’ve solved no one else’s problems in your real world life. The return on investment is that you are able to defeat powerful imaginary foes in an imaginary world. You may have made friends in the game, but most likely, you’ve never met them in the real world. That means you can’t hug them or share a cup of coffee, or go to an art gallery together. Fantasy can be a healthy escape, but in a modern implementation such as World of Warcraft it is more likely to become a debilitating distraction. Type ‘World of Warcraft addiction’ into Google and browse through the 4 million plus results.

Modern choices trade real meaning for instant gratification. Look around you next time you are in a restaurant. Chances are that many of the people you see will be looking into tiny glass screens instead of interacting with the real world. They are making a choice. Choosing a simulated world where everything is poised and posed over one the one that engages all five senses. One day maybe the simulated worlds we humans and our machines construct will have more depth than the real one, but that time has not arrived. If you are choosing the artificial worlds available in 2017, you are missing a great deal.

Life’s meaning cannot be boiled down to a single meme, or even all the memes you will be exposed to on Facebook during a year. Those memes are not beautiful choices. They distill complex real-world issues into easy to digest bites of information that will ultimately cause brain indigestion.

If you live an existence connected to the Internet, you live in the information age. Unfortunately, a great deal of the information that pops up each time you log on masquerades as something it is not: valuable to finding meaning.

The words you are reading right now are a narrative. There are armies of people motivated by different beliefs churning out millions of narratives at every minute of every hour of every day in the world I inhabit as I type out these words. Most of those narratives will not stand the test of time. They are the equivalent of your current haircut. Haircuts don’t age well. Ten years from now you will probably wonder why you wasted all that time. Choose well, because there are beautiful choices hiding in plain sight. Most of them involve getting out of bed and having an adventure. In real life, with people you can physically touch. That’s the essence of being human.

Next time you have dinner, power off your phone and look into the eyes of each person around the table. Tell them what you want to become and listen when they tell you what they dream of becoming. You’re not a Kardashian, and that’s a good thing. All those choices add up.

Too much talking and not enough listening

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“. . . I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS

I try maintain a roughly ten to one ratio in regards to my listening/speaking. Why do I feel it is important? I know that I do not know much. I know my scale in the universe. It reminds me to stay humble. I know that seeking knowledge is a growth/survival mechanism with a proven track record.

Which brings me to one of the problems I have with the current administration of the executive branch of the USA. As far as I can tell, Trump doesn’t appear to put much value on listening. Or on reality. He appears to be willfully ignoring what is actually happening in the world around him. Don’t take my word for it. Take his.

“This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.” No Donald. Your administration so far is a slow motion train wreck. Your national security advisor lasted three weeks. That’s a new land speed administration failure record.

“Drugs are becoming cheaper than candy bars.” Not even close to reality.

“The leaks are real, but the news is fake.” Translation: Anything that makes me look bad is bad and should be discounted. Reality doesn’t matter, only I matter.

Trump seems to want to attack anyone who questions anything he says or does. He appears hell bent on ignoring the counsel of the very people he should be listening to the most. He turns governance into a circus ring. The new American president has a lot of say about everything, and most of it sounds astoundingly uninformed. The rest of it sounds like blatant, unashamed lying.

That is not leadership. It is the opposite. It is a recipe for failure.

Success or failure often hinge on one’s ability to quietly take in the universe around themselves and contemplate. Those of us who shout the loudest about how great we they are are usually compensating for a lack of understanding. An inability to hear others is dangerous, and perhaps even suicidal in the right context.

We are on a train being controlled by a deaf and blind conductor. I hope the tracks ahead are intact.

Learning to keep your mouth shut

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“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters — don’t wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself.” —Epictetus
“One of the most powerful things you can do as a human being in our hyperconnected, 24/7 media world is say: “I don’t know.” Or, more provocatively: “I don’t care.” — The Daily Stoic

I’ve been practicing keeping my mouth shut. This may seem counter-intuitive if all you know of my existence comes through the lens of my writing. It’s still true. If you invite me out for coffee, or over to dinner, I will spend more time listening to you than I will talking about myself or anything else. If you are discussing a topic that I know nothing about, I will probably ask you carefully considered questions.

Admitting my own ignorance isn’t something I hesitate about. I’m prepared to engage from a position of knowing little to nothing. The goal is to grow and learn. No one expects you to have expertise in every area of human knowledge, or even in a single area. That’s why good leaders surround themselves with those who hold specialized knowledge in various areas. The leader’s job is to take all of the wisdom available and to make informed decisions that benefit society.

Epictetus gets it when he warns us not to worry about how great we are. You cannot trust a person who is fixated on their own importance. Such a person is unable to admit how little they know, and that can be very dangerous. Being able to admit that we aren’t experts in any given area is a critical skill for living a meaningful life.

Even more important is developing the ability to discern the areas of knowledge that are important to you and going after them. If your are surrounded by people who want you to enter the Catholic priesthood, for instance, but your passion is developing virtual worlds, you’ll be well served by developing the ability to tell friends and family, your peer group, or whatever tribe is exerting the pressure to spend your limited time and energy on something you don’t believe in: “I don’t care about that.” You can deliver this information gracefully, and then stick to your guns and pursue opportunities in the life goals that matter to you.

We live in a frenetic world. It is always OK to use filters to keep it from driving you mad. Decide to listen only to what matters, and your existence will grow calmer and more meaningful.

Principles

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“Take a good hard look at people’s ruling principle, especially at the wise, what they run away from and what they seek out.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

I believe that the human species is small and unimportant on a universal scale, but that doesn’t keep me from being endlessly fascinated by the activity on this little planet. I recently finished a really great book, Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. In it, he says, “Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.” We make up so many of our rules based solely on what we imagine the world to be like rather than on what the world truly is. In this age of nearly instantaneous transmission of information, many of us imagine the world is more violent than it has even been in our past. And this would be totally wrong.

That is not to discount violence, but only to put it through the filter of history, which gives everything more context. We are not living in the most violent time, rather we are living in relative peace. The only reason you don’t believe that is because we are also living in an age when many of us have near global sight. We are overexposed to the violence that exists in the now, and this leaves us with the false idea that we are living in the most violent era in history, a completely false reality.

In looking at the data, we can say that several things are true:

  1. The rate of violence declines as the rate of literacy increases. Access to knowledge, therefore, make people less violent.
  2. Democratically elected governments are less likely to start wars. There are more and more democracies with each passing decade.
  3. We spend more energy worrying about certain topics than we should. If you live in the United States, your lifetime risk of being killed in a car accident should worry you much more than the odds that you will become the victim of a terrorist attack.

Which brings us back around to ruling principles and wisdom. Are Trump and Pence operating under wise principles? I don’t think that either man is actually the one in charge of policy for the new and improved #MAGAUSA. The person actually pulling the strings is a man named Steve Bannon.

Bannon has unprecedented influence over the new ruling principles of the National Security Council, and that should probably worry you.

Here are a few Bannon quotes:

I’m a Leninist … Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment. The solution to online ‘harassment’ is simple: women should log off. Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer? Are there racist people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. The progressive narrative and that is all about victimhood. They’re either a victim of race. They’re victim of their sexual preference. They’re a victim of gender. All about victimhood and the United States is the great oppressor, not the great liberator. What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it? There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent. This country is in a crisis. And if you’re fighting to save this country, if you’re fighting to take this country back, it’s not going to be sunshine and patriots. It’s going to be people who want to fight.

I’m ready to fight Steve. Just not for the values and principles you espouse. You’re worried about all the wrong things, and your worldview is abhorrent. I want to fight for a world where everyone gets a place at the table, and that’s not what you believe in as far as I can tell. I want the levels of violence to keep going down, and that’s not going to happen with you pulling the strings.

Circle of control

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“We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What’s not under our control are the body and any of its parts, our possessions, parents, siblings, children, or country—anything with which we might associate.” —Epictetus, Discourses

I am in my mid-40s at the time I am writing this. My body is failing. That’s not to say the expiration date is near, but merely that I am hyperaware of the amount of wear and tear I have put on the machine. Military service in two different branches and a mobile lifestyle have taken a toll. I do not control my body’s reaction to this excessive wear and tear, but I do control my mind, and how it responds.

Our mind is the only thing, ultimately, that we do have control over, if we are fortunate enough to have a healthy brain. The lesson for myself, and anyone who chooses to read these words, is this: stop worrying about externality. Make choices that will keep your brain as healthy as possible. Let go of things you have zero influence over. News. Elections. The health of your national currency. What someone else thinks of you. It’s all quite irrelevant.

If you choose to engage with people on social media, remember that you don’t control what they think, and should therefore not become invested in those who have a different opinion than you. Express yourself, move on, and let go.

It was very icy this morning when I left the house, and even though I have all wheel drive, I found myself unable to make turns. Instead, I was sliding in straight lines across sheets of ice. I could easily have wrecked my expensive automobile. I realized that I couldn’t control the ice, or the way my car responded to it. Instead of getting upset, I crept home as slowly and carefully as I could. I made it safely, and for that I am grateful.

If I hadn’t, and had wrecked my car, I would focused on seeing the positives. My automobile has been great in the five years I’ve had it, but I am not attached to it. It’s just a tool that gets me where I want to go. My body is the exact same thing. A tool that gets my mind where I’d like it to go. In the realization of this, I am cognizant that I should try to take care of my car and my body, but that eventually, they will both fail me.

In the mean time, I’m focused on what’s really important – the choices I’m making, the habits I am forming, and the ideas I am exploring. Those are the only things that will matter when my existence is drawing to its close.

My circle of control is what’s happening inside my head. That’s the place that matters most, and what I do there will influence everything else. The same applies to you.

Be ruthless to the things that don’t matter

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“How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements — how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!”

— Seneca, On the Brevity of Life

Learning to say no has been a real journey for me. I was programmed at an early age to please others. That’s the easy way. I choose the harder way. I’ve been practicing saying no for several decades. It gets easier as I practice.

I’m going into 2017 with several goals in mind. One of them, and this one runs across years and decades, is to become a bit more thoughtful. I want to grow my mental real estate. Practicing saying no is a huge part of that. There are so many distractions. So many people who would love to waste my time, energy, and finances with ‘stuff’ that I will ultimately find unfulfilling and of little value. I might enjoy some of the things I’m offered in the moment, and that’s not a sin. However, if I reach the end of my life only to realize that I haven’t used my time wisely, I believe that I will die an unforgiven sinner. I believe I’ll have regrets at the end. When it’s too late to change the story.

There are 8,760 hours in this year. Some of them are already gone. I’ve spent some of them thinking about finishing my debut novel, a few pecking at the keys and searching for the words. I’m spent some of them thinking about my health. I’ve spent a lot of them reading about the way the Stoics approached life. I’m committed to the things that matter this year. Personal mental growth, storytelling, and being a thoughtful partner are my top three priorities.

I’m not arrogant enough to believe I matter that much to very many people. I’m not sure I’d want the burdens that go along with celebrity. However, if you choose to join me for a few moments or hours during the coming year, either as a reader, friend or casual stranger who arrives by accident of circumstance, I hope you’ll take the time to stop what you’re doing and give the idea that ruthlessness can be a good thing some of your mental real estate.

Learning how to say no is a critical skill. Learning the value of your time, which is actually the currency of your life, is paramount to making the journey worthwhile. It is your life and I hope you will live it like you matter. Wishing you a thoughtful and joyous 2017.

Be ruthless to the things that don’t matter.