“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is,” Kurt Vonnegut observed in discussing Hamlet during his influential lecture on the shapes of stories. “The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad,” Alan Watts wrote a generation earlier in his sobering case for learning not to think in terms of gain or loss. And yet most of us spend swaths of our days worrying about the prospect of events we judge to be negative, potential losses driven by what we perceive to be “bad news.” In the 1930s, one pastor itemized anxiety into five categories of worries, four of which imaginary and the fifth, “worries that have a real foundation,” occupying “possibly 8% of the total.”
“It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.” – Marcus Aurelius
This past weekend was a fascinating experience for someone who has spent most of the last fifteen months in his basement. Over the course of three days we experienced the best of America, celebrating the birth of our nation on a picturesque farmstead that could be the backdrop for a Norman Rockwell Americana painting. The seventeen hours of maneuvering through the interstates and back roads from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire, and back, were frustrating, eye opening, depressing and sometimes inspirational.
But, the nine hours spent on the farm with like minded friends, sharing thoughts about the past, present and future, downing a few cold beverages, eating fresh farm fare, watching the youngsters playing on trampolines, teenagers playing games and setting bonfires, and mingling with baby goats made the trek worth it. What I didn’t see was anyone tapping away on an iGadget. Just real down to earth folks chatting, joking, and enjoying each other’s company. Everyone feels welcome on Hopewell Farm, as Marc has created a paradise on earth over the last fifteen years, building a thriving farm – raising cattle, hogs, chickens, turkeys, and tapping the acres of maple trees to make the best syrup on earth.
“I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.”
Cato
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor Frankl
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”
Epictetus
“How does it help…to make troubles heavier by bemoaning them?”
Seneca
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“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca
“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”
Seneca
“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.”
Seneca
“If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”
Seneca
“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”
Seneca
“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.”
Seneca
“He who fears death will never do anything worth of a man who is alive.”
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
Seneca
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Seneca
“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject… And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them… Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.”
Seneca
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
– C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
I remember once in college we had a class discussion on how ancient Rome expanded primarily out of fear of being conquered. In other words, the Romans believed their best defense was a strong offense: they engaged in the hostile takeovers of their enemies to avoid being conquered themselves.
This calls to mind the interaction between the emotion offear and how it relates to the survival instinct. Undeniably, these will often supersede the loftier considerations of ethics and law; and they apply equally to individuals, gangs, groups, corporations, cults, and governments.
The desire for control is rooted in fear and perhaps greed. In many cases, these may even be rooted in pride.
“It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
Seneca
“True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient.”
Seneca
“The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.”
Seneca
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”
“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. … The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
Seneca
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
Seneca
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”
Seneca
“No man was ever wise by chance”
Seneca
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
Seneca
“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
Seneca
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
Seneca
“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject… And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them… Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.”
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
Seneca
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Seneca
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard
How much water is left in YOUR fishbowl?
Imagine that the moment you are born that your number of allotted years is represented as a fishbowl of water. For some, the bowl of water represents 90 or more years. Sadly, others only get a day. Most of us are allotted days somewhere in between. But, the fact of the matter is that the quantity is quite finite. In more morbid terms, we all march inexorably to our deaths from the moment we enter this world.
Now, this is a most unsettling thought! So unsettling, in fact, that most of us can’t handle it. Sure, we all know we’re going to die – in a 21st century intellectually rationalist sort of way. But, we really don’t BELIEVE it – nosiree, not with the same conviction that we believe, for example, that the sun will rise tomorrow. Seneca tells us as much when he writes;
“You live as if you would live forever; the thought of human frailty never enters your head, you never notice how much of your time is already spent.”———— Seneca (quotes in green)
I don’t know about you … but, that pretty much sounds like me. I rarely give my fishbowl much thought.
SENECA – THE VERY RICH STOIC
Seneca states that not only do we refuse to come to terms with our very brief time on earth but, even worse, we waste away the precious little time we do possess. He goes into considerable detail showing how we shackle ourselves to our labors and our professions. He laments that we give so much of ourselves – in terms of time – to those who do nothing but waste our time. He considered it a tragedy that too many die as if they were children, never having learned to live a full life. In modern terms he would say we’re all too happy that etched on our tombstones is our greatest accomplishment; “He filled out all his expense reports on time.”
