It is clarity of what I want out of life that I sometimes lack. That perfectly distilled purpose that shines white hot, like the summer sun reflecting hard off of still waters. I am frequently without that eye melting variety of certainty and, lacking that bright reflection, I get distracted by the tiny flickers of occasional substance and imposed authenticity that floats past my eyes as I try to work out what the fuck I am supposed to be doing with my life.
I understand why this happens. It is because the truth – My Truth. Your Truth. Anyone’s Truth – that capital-T Truth that tunnels your vision and abbreviates the edges of your periphery so you can focus on what you should be doing to accomplish what you want to accomplish in life is a hard thing to sustain.
It is like a mirage in the distance as you plod through endless desert sands. It’s there and then it’s not. You see it, then you don’t. And in that fury of joyous frustration, you keep your feet moving because your dry, cracked lips ache for one sweet drop of the nectar that spills from the fruits of that Truth you so desperately seek. That Truth that will give your life purpose and meaning and definition. That Truth to which you alone have been called that will electrify your vision and give focus to your life.
This calling towards that clarifying Truth is perhaps best summed up in the words of philosopher Soren Kierkegaard when he said:
“What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act… the crucial thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”
It is in our slow march through the barren wasteland of tiny, insignificant distractions that lie all around us – those shiny, temporary things that we so desperately want to make us full – that we must come to realize that we all want to find a Truth that we are “willing to live and die for” because we know that it could sustain us if only it could be found.
And that is where we all have to start; by finding that sort of Truth.
What is the Truth?
“Here is such a definition of truth: the objective uncertainty, held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth available for an existing person.” -Soren Kierkegaard
There are two sorts of truths in our lives. The first are important, every day, “objectively certain” truths that make no demands, short of cognitive ability, in being understood and grasped. These we call scientific truths. These are truths that can be captured secondhand, through the diligent observation and discovery of others, and passed back and forth amongst ourselves, regardless of the sort of person you are.
The second sort of truth – the truth that Kierkegaard was searching for and the truth that he considers to be the “highest truth available for an existing person” – that sort of truth we typically call moral truth.
Moral truths are the truths that are decided when we are “objectively uncertain” about the efficacy of our claims but we hold strong to them in the face of the gravest of circumstances. These are truths that are not discovered but created through our steadfast adherence to the principles that are demanded in order to make these truths “true” for us.
Moral truths require a discipline of action in order to be born. Perhaps it is through meditation, or constant kindness, or a strict diet, or a monitoring of speech, or a commitment to a cause, or whatever – this sort of truth is not a clarity of understanding, it is a clarity of being. These are the Truths that we commit to in our lives that give it depth, direction, meaning, and purpose.
These are the Truths that Kierkegaard so desperately ached to find in order to live fully. The Truths that spring from the idea about what we think that we should be in the world. The Truths that will push us towards our living and dying and will help us make the most out of both.
The case for Truth as subjectivity.
“It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.” –Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy
Before the mass of angry rationalists descend upon me and eat my soul for suggesting the subjectivity of truth, I want to defend my argument further by considering our ability to maintain both objective and subjective truths in the world.
I am not such a backwoods barbarian that I do not see the value and validity of logical reasoning and scientific truths. Obviously, these sorts of truths are critically important in the world. I am merely saying that, if we claim that only these truths can be true objectively I do not think we are being genuine to the spirit of truth.
Logical and scientific truths do not hit at the deepest sort of reasonings, convictions, and reality that shape and gives direction and meaning to our life. They ignore the importance of the individual, subjective, personal component of fact and by doing so, never fully hit at the heart of our desires for living.
The truth of gravity will not help me make it through one more stress filled day of demands from my deep desire to make an entrepreneurial enterprise succeed. The truth of friction will not help me decide if I should help a stranger begging for cash on the side of a cold and rain-soaked street. In order to find the Truth that exists in these experiences – that exists individually – we have to retreat to the potential of the subjective in order to divine the power of the objective.
How do we do this?
According to Kierkegaard, we must first be reminded of the lack of objectivity in what we are coming to decide as truthful. We must have “objective uncertainty” in our choice and then we must come to choose it time and time again, despite that uncertainty. And in that steadfast adherence to our choice, we find the strength and character of subjective truth. Subjective truth then is something akin to a “leap of faith” – that leap of faith taken with the best available evidence and towards the most desirable outcome you want out of our life.
As so many of our deepest ideas and beliefs about life are not based on impersonal facts or laws of nature, we are often forced to face and prove the subjective truths of our existence. Those things that rise from objective uncertainty but those things that define the very nature of our being as subjects in the world.
These are the powerful subjective truths that are the true substance of our being and that shape the course and direction of our lives.
No truths that harm
“Those thoughts are true which guides us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur.” – William James
Here is where some will attempt to make the case that I am advocating that people have the right to believe in any old truth. I want to stop that train of thought before it leaves the station.
I am not advocating the purely irrationalist position that there is only subjectivity of moral truths and that everyone has a right to theirs. The sort of subjective truths I am talking about are not blindly cobbled together, unexamined beliefs of pure experience. No. You still have an obligation to search your subjective truths for as much objectivity as possible and, what’s more, you have a duty to humanity to remove the damaging things that hurt for no reason and with no sense.
That Truth that you find – that you have decided to live and die for – should never be a truth that should cause harm, physical or otherwise, for no legitimate and defensible reason. If it does, it is not an idea or belief that is True. I am sorry, but it’s not. It’s a lie pretending to be something true and if you look deep enough into it you will see behind its facade.
If the things you claim are true have harming as their means, you have not discovered a moral truth that is worth taking the leap of faith towards so keep looking.
Truth is decision, not discovery.
“On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
The Truths that we apply to our life – those moral things that define our principles – these can not be discovered as though they existed outside of ourselves, they can only be constantly and consistently affirmed as Truth through our decision to commit to the actions that make them true.
If I decide that my Truth is that I should always seek to help those in need, I make this true, not merely by presenting it to others, as though it were a law of nature or math, but by proving it through the “truthfulness” of it through my actions. The Truth of it can in fact only be confirmed through my commitment to the proving of it by helping those in need as often as possible.
Truth, therefore, is a continuous process of doing what you have decided is true and holding that Truth up to the light time and time again to make sure that the evidence that made it true for you in the first place continues to exist and affirms the Truth of it.
This makes the subjective Truth we have discussed here – the Truth of personal ideas and beliefs, political ideologies and social identities – a Truth that is impossible to dismiss. It makes it a Truth that is under constant scrutiny that requires constant duty and discipline. It makes it a Truth that can not merely be believed and then taken for granted. It makes it a Truth that always has to prove its “truthfulness” in the face of ever-changing circumstances, situations, and experiences and that makes it a Truth that you can live and die for.
It is every parent’s secret wish that their children should grow up to be something great. Greater than them, in fact. Most parents want their children to pursue some sort of life that will fulfill them; financially, personally and socially. Something that gives their life reason and purpose and satisfaction.
Most parents – the greatest of parents – want their children to outshine them in every aspect of life and set them up to succeed in that way because it shows that the groundwork was laid. The heavy things lifted, the trenches dug and the sturdy foundation laid. And atop that foundation, we expect that our children will build structures that far surpass the ones that we have been able to build of our own lives.
To that ends, the more that I think about the sort of foundation that I want to provide for my son – the more I consider what sort of infrastructure I want to leave for him to build his life – the more I realize that it is a love of philosophical inquiry that I hope to put at the heart of his living. I want that he should begin his life as a philosopher and keep the spirit of philosophy close at hand in whatever he endeavors in life and if I am able to give him nothing else, I want to be able to give him that.
Now I am not expecting my son to pursue an academic philosophical life. If he wants to go that route I will fully support it, for probably a long time given what a degree in philosophy pays. But no. My wish for him is that when he grows up he will embody the behavior of an active, practical philosopher in spirit, mind, and body. A life characterized by curiosity, reason, agreeable skepticism, deep thought, and deeper living.
What is the life of a Philosopher?
The life of a philosopher is personified by a constant state of unbridled wonder, analysis, and critique – of yourself, of the world, and of your place in it.
It means never missing an opportunity to interrogate the universe out of sincere curiosity about the workings of the world.
It means exploring other ideas and beliefs and values with openness, earnest interest and a willingness to change what you believe when you find something that more closely aligns with what you want out of your life.
It means shrugging off old ideas that don’t fit, no matter where you got them from, and being confident and courageous enough to pursue your beliefs and values no matter what anyone else says.
It means asking the big questions of life and searching high and low for the answers that satisfy your soul. Those questions and answers that give your life meaning and color and beauty.
Children are already so naturally inclined to this sort of curiosity and exploration, and instead of providing my personal answers to these big personal questions, my hope is to teach my son the ways to find the answers for himself – from himself and from the world – and to give him the tools to reason and think well so that he will always be well equipped to find his way in this world.
Why a Philosopher?
A philosopher is not your average truth seeker looking for reason and reason alone. A true philosopher, a philosopher of life, is an extraordinary sort of explorer of all things big and small. They are the reckless trailblazers of big ideas. Men and women who blow the doors off of conventional thinking and are never satisfied with the status quo. And that is what I hope for my son.
I hope that my son never stops trying to prove the existence of magical things that he might believe in. That he never becomes so certain of the ideas and beliefs and values that he has been exposed to in this world that he stops looking for better and more honest ways to live that suit him.
I hope he never stops intellectually challenging me when I ask him to do certain things and he challenges the world in the same way when he is uncertain of the value or reason behind what is being asked of him.
I hope he maintains a healthy sense of intellectual and social rebellion, never being content to follow anything that does not agree with his common sense and reason. Never abandoning his integrity for the sake of comfort and never shying away from conflict when it is necessary for resolution.
All of these hopes I have for my son are things that define the life of a philosopher, and that is the life I would wish upon my son. Because a life lived with those guiding principles is a life that is always fulfilling, never dull and completely and honestly your own.
Good Doers and Good Thinkers
We teach our children how to do many things. We teach them how to tie their shoes and ride a bike and brush their teeth and to read and to write. But do we spend the meaningful time required to teach them how to think? Not how to think, as in what to believe, but how to think as in formulating well-reasoned positions and arguments for their beliefs that are founded on truth and understanding. And then teaching them how to follow through with those beliefs in a way that enhances their experience of the world.
Because being a philosopher is not only about thinking deeply. It is about living deeply. It is about taking all the contingent truths that you have come by and applying them to your life in a way that brings more beauty to how you love and live. It is about reasoning through the complexity of life, but when reason is not enough, being confident enough in your ideas and beliefs that you can come to a solution with your heart.
What we should want for our children is not to merely be good doers, but to be good thinkers. We should want them to dig deeply into the important questions of life, sooner rather than later. If they start thinking about them now, before their minds are contaminated with caustic conventions of average thought, they have the possibility of coming to deeper truths than are possible when you grow up.
We should want our children to grow rebellious in their minds. Not teaching them to be contrarian or undisciplined or rude, but to maintain a healthy dose of agreeable skepticism in the things that they learn and to never be afraid to ask why and how until they are satisfied with the answers.
We should want for them to not do what we say, “because we said so”, but to do what we say because we have given them strong arguments for it and they have come to respect the power and might of strong arguments. And if they do not want to do something that we ask of them, then they should be tasked with producing even stronger arguments against our arguments. Give us reasons for their dissent. And if those reasons are compelling or creative enough we should be willing to reward them with an extended bedtime or the treat that they asked for or some other compensation for respectfully and intelligently arguing their position.
What does it take to raise future philosophers?
It doesn’t take much. Children are natural philosophers, to begin with. They are open, inquiring, skeptical, irrational, whiny, stubborn, prone to overly complex explanations for simple things and fond of naps. That basically describes every philosopher you will ever meet.
Children just need some freedom and guidance and to be given a long leash for their intellectual roaming. They need to be able to learn by doing as much as by thinking because worldly experience is a philosopher’s prized tool for the deeper discovery of the truths of life. Children need healthy boundaries of course, but those boundaries should be wide and far enough that they can explore untethered. They will need direction sometimes, but what they really require is a patient, playful, and present parent that can help them explore everything that life has to offer.
As parents, we also need to create an intellectually safe and civil learning environment for our children. We need to help them to engage in difficult topics in fun, logical and secure ways so that they learn the value and joyful inspiration of sharing ideas, cultivating understanding and listening and learning from others. This means promoting a space where respect, consideration and active listening are the underlying foundations of discourse. We need to make our children feel comfortable in expressing their thoughts so that they have the confidence to explore them deeply.
You will be surprised at how receptive children are towards deep philosophical questions if they are gently and safely guided towards them in a fun, playful way. The key is to stress that there are no wrong answers, there are only arguments of proof for what you believe and these should be explored to find how soundly they hold up. Half the point of philosophical exploration is to get them to see that beliefs can come from anywhere and the best beliefs, those that we can come to rely upon most, are usually those that are closest to reason and that hold up under the most sincere scrutiny.
All you have to do is take a little time with your children during captive moments of attention, when there is nothing else to do, and ask them some leading questions. Car rides are usually when I do the most brilliant philosophizing with my son. We are like Socrates and Plato driving around in a KIA. It’s a perfect opportunity to turn down the music and open up to some fun, intellectual discussion. He has nowhere he can go and I have nowhere I would rather be.
Here are some great example questions I have explored with my son that may help you to get you started in diving into philosophy with your own children:
What do you think the world is made out of?
Where do you think your thoughts come from?
What does it mean to be a friend?
What is real? What is fake?
How is real life different than a dream?
What is time?
Is it ever ok to tell a lie?
Where do stars come from?
Why do cats purr?
Is the computer world different from this one?
Why are there colors in the world?
What are shadows?
Do cats have nine lives?
Why are there animals?
The point is not that some of these questions have obvious, explainable scientific answers. The point is to get children to think deeply, critically and fondly of life and all the questions that living produces. It is to get them to pull answers from experience and reason and try to defend those answers with logical arguments and sound reasoning.
Summary
Your role as a parent who wants to raise future philosophers is not so much in guiding your child’s thoughts or experiences, but in setting them up with the foundational tools of a deep, philosophical life. Teaching them the value of questioning the world, of questioning ideas and of questioning the things that they believe. You should try to teach them the value of intellectual rebellion; to be able to maintain deep, challenging, but respectful conversations with the world and to have the courage and capacity to remain flexible in their beliefs.
This means creating an environment of safe, but challenging, intellectual exploration. An environment of mutual respect, honesty, and sincere engagement. It means giving your children the freedom to run wild in their minds and building their confidence to express and pursue those thoughts and ideas to see how they fit into the world. Most of all, it means embracing the childlike sense of wonder in yourself and letting your children involve you in their silly, magical meanderings.
I know not every parent wants to raise the kind of child I am talking about here. I don’t expect that they should. Each and every parent should decide for themselves what sort of people they want to try and help their children become. But for those of us that have lived, breathed and bathed in the potential and beauty of a philosophical life, giving the gift of it to our children is one of the greatest things that we can try to do.
Of all the gifts of childhood that we discard when we put on the shabby, overgrown, hand-me-down disguises of adulthood, it is the passionate pursuit of our dreams, through the following of our muse, that is the saddest thing we lose. Nothing is such a quiet assassin of the soul as being made to face the “reality” of life and being forced to give up the gifts we have that others say will not carry us where we want to go.
And in that giving up on our dreams the muse inside us quietly weeps. She knows that something important to happiness has been laid to rest and that something means that she too must begin to die. Over the years, despite her persistence to fuel your creative fires, she fades and shrinks. She becomes a small, quiet voice in the back of your head telling you what you could have done and what you could have been.
But we do not have to let our muses die such needless deaths! We can resurrect them, and in doing so resurrect the dreams and passions that they fueled. There is always time left. They never completely die until you do. But the hard work is bringing them back to life and for that we need instruction!
What is a Muse?
A muse is that inspirational voice that spurns you on towards greater and greater achievement. A muse is not tied to the arts. Your muse might lead you towards entrepreneurship. Your muse might lead you to athletic accomplishment. Your muse might lead you to become the best god-damn juggler the world has ever seen. Whatever. It’s your fucking muse. No one gets to tell you what it is and what it wants you to do. You just have to make sure you can recognize it when you see it.
I ask that you indulge me in my extended metaphor that this article evolves. Most of you know what I mean when I say muse. It is that voice of creative and expressive fervor that gets loud when you are following your passion and things just seem to flow. I also ask that you excuse my use of the pronoun she when I speak of muses. My muse happens to be female, but a muse can be anthropomorphized into any sort of creature or gender that you desire. Once again, your fucking muse, and I am not here to quibble about the specifics of how you imagine its form in your head nor am I insinuating anything about what gender or form muses should take. Disclaimer over and on to the good parts.
Recognize your Muse
The first step in resurrecting your muse is figuring out what it looks like and sounds like inside you. Everyone’s muse is different. Different temperaments. Different skill sets. Different expectations. You need to identify the personality of your muse and seek to creative an internal environment that supports and nurtures it. Only then will it thrive and offer you the direction you ask of it.
I wish I had the “boys in the basement” that author Stephen King has. They seem like the right sort of gruff, hard-working and productively resolute muses that would suit a man of Stephen King’s prolificness. But my muse is pixie like; capricious, delicate, translucent, flippant, foolhardy and borderline reckless. It refuses commitment and is often absent for days on end with nary a word of where she has been when she happens to return. I don’t question her when she comes back. I don’t want to upset her and see her running off again, so I invite her back with arms wide open and let her work her magic.
Why I never refuse her when she comes back is because I want that she should never refuse me as often as she does. So when she bursts through the door, wings all aflutter and golden glimmers of faerie dust sprinkling from her ass end, like a bee with too much nectar, I stop what I am doing and get to the work of loving her, nurturing her and listening to her. I don’t care where she has been, I want what she brings me when she returns.
And when my muse chooses to stay with me for a while, and when I choose to follow her flights of fancy despite the difficulty and danger it occasionally takes, I always end up somewhere that I always wanted to be but never had the sense to find on my own. That is the unexpected joy and occasional misery of life spent with my muse.
But that is just my muse. It will not be the same for you. You have to listen carefully to where your heart pulls you. You have to recognize the deep, passionate expressions you have to give to the world. When you become clear about that, you will recognize your muse – your guide to finding your passion in life. And you will learn how you need to take care of her in order to get the most from your relationship with her.
Whatever far off dreams that you can imagine, they are attached to a way to get there, and that way can be found by following your muse.
Follow Your Muse
If you have a muse, and I think everyone does, never be afraid to follow her when you find her. What do you have inside you that is pulling at your heartstrings? What things stir the waters of your soul? You need to identify them and you need to pull up anchor from wherever you have stopped your journey and let the winds reclaim your sails so that you can once again follow your muse.
Your muse needs you to be alive. Only you can breathe life into her fairy wings and only you can see her floating magic. Follow her boldly, with a courage bordering on recklessness and see where she would have you go. She has a destination. She has your place in mind. She knows the map that can lead you to the dreams and passions that you buried when you grew out of childhood and the adults said you could not carry all of your treasures with you.
She kept them safe for you and wants to take you back there to reclaim them. Follow her.
Protect your Muse
And when you think your muse is safe – when you have found her and followed her and she has led you to all the buried things you lost in yourself – that is when you are going to have to find a way to protect her. Because people are going to try to kill her again.
Some people are never going to be comfortable with the fact that you are being led around by your muse. They do not have a guide of their own to lead them to their gifts or they think that following the flights of fancy that your muse insists is not a proper way to spend your days. So, they have to make sure that every muse they find is quietly and quickly disposed of.
This is when you must stay vigilant and strong. You must not let other people poison the mental waters of hope and discipline that your muse frequently drinks from. You have to keep your head clean and your heart clear, and trust the instinct that following your passion will always be more profitable than following the rules of others.
Share your Muse
There is one final piece to getting the most from your muse and that is the sharing of her. It is not enough that you should be driven to inspiration by your muse. You should seek to be an inspiration to others through the expression of the gifts your muse provides for you. If that is art or business or athletics or whatever, let the expression of your muse be a motivation to the world to also have the courage to follow their own creative voice.
The muses work through us in order to breathe life into the world as a whole. They work towards the greater good for everyone and as such, they are most alive when they are shared with others. By giving the world our unique contributions brought to life by following our muses, we give them a little a little bit of our blood, a little bit of our soul and a little bit of our brilliance. We give the world the meaning to which muses were intended in the first place – a splash of rare and passionate beauty in an otherwise boring and complacent world.
Throughout the storied and colorful history of philosophy, it has made many attempts at defining the good life. With these attempts some common themes began to emerge and a set of general models grew out of the disparate threads of definition that philosophers attached to their specific ideas of what the good life should look like.
The problem that most of us find in applying the specific models of the good life presented by the different philosophies is that they require too much specificity while excluding the experiential, situational, and personal nuance that is necessary for people to truly find a path to their own version of the good life. I believe that no philosophy is comprehensive enough to capture the subtlety required to appeal to and work for everyone.
To that ends, I wanted to take a step back from the specific approaches of the good life and present four general models that might help us in identifying and applying the principles of thought and action that come out of philosophy and that can deepen, enrich, and fulfill our lives.
It is important to note that these models are not mutually exclusive. They can all exist harmoniously in your life. You need not choose one and slavishly adhere to it in order to reap the rewards of it. I present them in separation, only to show the distinctions and differences, so they can be understood and applied at all.
It should also be noted that these are not the only philosophical models for living. There are many more. These are the ones to which I most often find myself returning to, and the ones I have the most familiarity. I urge you to discover your own and apply them with the same alacrity to which I apply the ones I define here.
Contemplative
“In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.” – Descartes
In school we learn. We memorize. We recite. We capture information and we vomit it back up and because of that mind-numbing pedagogical methodology, I think there is a fundamental problem with modern education. It has strayed far from the holistic mind-building that was its intent. If the point of education is to improve the mind we should be focusing more on teaching people how to effectively contemplate the knowledge they accumulate instead of forcing them to become exceptional parroters of already discovered information.
The contemplative model of the good life puts an emphasis on the deeper thinking of philosophical experience. It is not enough to know things, we must be able to think things. We must be able to achieve a sustained focus on things and dig deeply into them – profoundly and with a meditative scrutiny.
This model for the good life is captured well in the philosophical reasonings of Descartes. His maxim of “I think therefore I am” is a perfect mantra for the contemplative model. It is through the reasoned contemplation of our being that we come to understand the world and our place in it. It is through concentrated introspection that we begin to shape and mold that knowledge that we have gained into something more well-defined and more valuable.
The value of the contemplative life is directed towards a deeper knowing of the world. Because a life filled with deep exploration and contemplation is a life of understanding. It is a life of wisdom and not merely a life of knowledge. While knowledge is a great gift to the world that we should all continuously seek, wisdom is your personal understanding of it. Wisdom is the ultimate achievement because it means the knowledge was absorbed, filtered, changed, and made into something worth knowing and something that can be applied to live well.
Active
“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.” -Sartre
This model may be considered the flip side of the contemplative life. This is a philosophical life of mental and physical movement. Of applied philosophy. Of engaged existence. It is the living, breathing, running, jumping, stretching, straining, application of philosophy through action.
The active model puts an emphasis on going out and “doing” philosophy. On living in the world and through the world by engaging with it on multiple levels. Political. Social. Cultural. It is concerned with the magic that philosophy can offer when it is put into practice. The active model of the good life is about experiences and interactions. It is about pushing the boundaries of our mind and body through actions that keep you moving towards your passions and dreams.
This model for the good life is best captured in the philosophies of the Existentialists. In them, we see a rebellious appreciation of actionable philosophy and an emphasis on living a meaningful life in spite of the inherent meaninglessness of it all. In existentialism, we see a call to action to define your reason for being and then make it a part of your very soul. It demands you to be a soul of action and choices and principles.
We should pursue the action model of a good life because it is a way to breathe life into all the things that we think. We are creatures that exist in the world – that exist in societies and cultures and political structures that demand our engagement. No matter how much we want to shelter ourselves from the machinations of the world we have no choice but to be involved to some degree. The active model of philosophy beckons us to seek out those opportunities of engagement in the world and make them a part of our life and identity.
Fatalistic
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” – Epictetus
It is important to first define my use of the word fatalism here. This is not a blind and blanket resignation towards our ability to affect change in the world. I am not suggesting that one should adopt a view of hard predeterminism. The fatalistic view that I am speaking of is more traditionally philosophical. It is a view heavily espoused by the Stoics and adapted to different degrees among philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
This fatalistic model of the good life emphasizes an appropriate acceptance of the things to which we have no control and not spending on our energy on resisting those things. It instead suggests that we put our energy towards influencing those things to which we can control. It internalizes our locus of control. It scopes out the boundaries of what we can affect and helps us to sharpen our focus on those things that are within our power to change.
This model of the good life is most certainly best exemplified in the work of the Stoics. Stoic thought has seen a resurgence through the work of Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holliday and it is obvious why. We live in tumultuous times. Politically, socially, culturally and personally. There are so many external forces pushing and pulling us towards or away from things and it is good to be reminded that those things have less control over the happiness trajectory of our lives than we give them.
And that is the benefit of this model of the good life. It helps us to accept the situations of our lives, to a degree, and gives us the capacity to react appropriately in order to maintain our equanimity and joy of living. It removes us from the burden of constant worry and gives us the perspective we need to know how to approach the difficult situations of life.
It is difficult to be able to identify the boundaries of our control – to be able to acknowledge that much of your life is not entirely yours to manage. The fatalistic model provides us those boundaries in stark clarity. More than that, it forces us to focus on the things you do control and that have the most important relevance to your happiness – your relation and reaction to negative experiences.
Hedonistic
“Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.” – Epicurus
I want to be clear here. The hedonistic model of life is not one of unbridled excess, as the term hedonism is commonly understood. The hedonistic model of the good life is one that moves in pursuit of simple, personal pleasures. This is a model of living that celebrates the joy of friendship. The pleasure of a simple, well-prepared meal. The wonder and beauty of a sunset. The echoing music sound of a child’s laughter. A good book and a warm cup of tea as the rain taps against a window.
These are the quiet, simple indulgences that give so much value and meaning to our lives. They are things missed if your attention is only on the larger, more elusive pleasures that never seem to live up to the expectations we have of them.
This model of the good life is most eloquently expressed in the philosophy of the Epicureans of ancient Rome. Despite their misappropriated reputation, these were men and women who emphasized the simple pleasures of life and sought them out with a passionate consistency.
We should want to pursue this model because there is always a necessity to return yourself to the simple pleasures of living – beyond contemplation, beyond action, beyond resignation – we need to remind ourselves that the company of friends, a simple meal and a glass of wine is sometimes all that we need to renew in us the joy of being alive.
There are so many missed pleasures in the world because we have turned our attention to those enormous, hulking wants and desires that blind us to what we already have. The hedonistic model asks us to readjust our attention to those things that truly lend themselves to a sense of a fulfilled and fruitful life. Appreciate the simple pleasures of living and be returned to the consistent joy that can be found in life.
Summary
As I said in the beginning of this article, we should not try to pursue any one of these philosophical models to the exclusion of the others. They are all necessary, to some degree, to bring about the true and holistic fruition of the good life.
All of these models should find a place in your life at one point or another. They should all be sprinkled liberally throughout your participation in living – given the circumstances, experiences, and situations you find yourself in and what is called for to get the most out of your life.
I imagine you already engage these few models to some degree in your life. Your task should then be to identify which models are lacking in your life or which models you want to further nurture and to grow them to the degree appropriate for you to find the proper balance for your version of the good life.
I have given you the knowledge, the responsibility of defining and applying these models and finding the wisdom in them is up to you.
When I talk to people about philosophy the conversation is inevitably steered towards the practical value of it. Why does it matter if we engage in deep philosophical inquiry into our lives? What does philosophy offer us in our day to day living? And why should we put in the hard intellectual work of philosophical investigation into our lives?
I suppose I take for granted the power, joy, and discipline of diving deeply into the mind. I take it as a given that, should people ache to live and dream and be and love, that they know that it starts inside their heads – through their beliefs and values and thoughts about life.
So I have taken a step back from these assumptions and have made an effort to qualify the value of philosophy in the hopes that somewhere you can find a starting point for your own life of philosophy.
Remember that these are just a few of the wonderful gifts of philosophy. I would need to write a book in order to be comprehensive enough to give all the reasons, but I hope that in these five you find a reason that is good enough for you to take the intellectual leap.
Philosophy initiates discovery and wonder.
“Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.” – Plato
Think back to when you were a child. When every morning you woke up to a day that was filled with a freshness that fueled you. You did not yet cling to the jaded conceit that you knew everything about the world and every answer you were fed by others was followed with the question, why?
Children are natural born philosophers. They have a perpetual curiosity about the world and they have an infinite imagination for answering those questions. We lose that fascination as we grow up and begin to accumulate a sliver of understanding of the world and we cease to dig any deeper, content that the few rocks we have overturned in our minds or the few experiences we have had with the world have given us all the information we need to justify our assumptions about the universe and we cease our investigation.
As children, we had not yet become so jaded that we thought we knew everything and because of that, we entered into the world every day with an openness and a curiosity that fueled the fires in our bellies. We wanted to explore and discover and understand. Every new forest was a potential haven for magical things. Every experience a learning one.
Nothing is such a thief of joy and gratitude on our lives as losing our sense of discovery and wonder at the workings of the world and the people in it. As soon as we stop asking why of everything we become complacent to the multiplicity of vantage points that we can approach the world from.
Philosophy returns us to that childlike enthusiasm of discovery and wonder. It renews our interest in the world and helps us realize that there is so much of the world, of others and of ourselves that we do not understand and should not judge.
No matter how old you get, no matter how much you experience, no matter how much you think you know about the world and what it has to offer, never ceased to be surprised, amazed, and constantly curious about the wonderful everything we get to experience and investigate.
How the sun paints the sky in a million different colors when it moves to slumber for the night.
The curious magic of splashing in a rain puddle, with the warm drops of spring rain tapping its fingertip rhythm on your head and pulling from the ground the earthy fragrance of life.
The heart palpitating excitement of a velvet soft kiss shared between lovers.
The everyday, every minute, every second amazing experience of just being alive. Every part of it should fascinate you and you should be so incredibly grateful to be able to discover and wonder about it all.
Philosophical inquiry helps you question and pursue your true values.
“Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.” – Socrates
For most of us, the things we have come to value are hand-me-down relics from the people that have groomed us for living. Family. Friends. Society. We have been given the worth of things by others and we have been tasked with fitting them into the vision of our lives, never stopping to ask if the values that others have given us fit into the vision we have for our own, personal idea of the good life.
Through philosophical inquiry and discovery we are able to excavate the many other values that are out there, and by unearthing them, give them meaning in our lives. We should not have guilt in discarding the outdated, outlived and unneeded values that others try to impose upon us. What works for one person will not necessarily work for another.
We are each responsible for defining and creating the value of our lives. No one can do that work for you. Philosophy gives us the tools and experiences to venture into our own discovery of the things we value and bring them into our lives so that we can approach the good lives that each of us envisions.
You have to ask yourself, honestly and frequently:
What should I value in my life?
What makes a good life for me?
What do I want out of life and love?
What beliefs are holding me back and what beliefs can propel me forward?
You alone choose the definition of your life and the meaning of your experience. And it should be a desperate search until you find the values you want to embody and then you should stop at nothing to make them a part of your being in every way.
It is only then that you will look at your life with joy and happiness. As something you created that fits you perfectly and not something handed down that droops and sags and trips you when you aim to move.
Philosophy brings us deeper into our relationships.
“Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.” -Erich Fromm
Philosophy is made for love. For what is true love if not the open, unabridged intermingling of our thoughts, ideas, values, and expressions of life shared with another? In that, philosophy provides the honest and true roots of love. The expressions of love that are not contaminated by the middling perversions of artistic and emotional interpretation.
The depth, color, meaning and beauty of our relationships is directly drawn from how we see and how we relate to the world. The expression of our values in the world will attract like-minded individuals and it will set us up for the depth of love we all seek. This is not to say that we should strive to attract people with similar deep thoughts, but we should always strive to find a partner that has the capacity to think deeply at all.
Philosophy requires us to dig deep within ourselves and to come to grips with that craziness that lives inside our heads. It is there. All of us have the bouncing, laughing, straight-jacketed thoughts of existence that terrify us and our reluctance to admit them, confront them and be gentle with them prevents us from doing so with the crazy that lives in others.
There is nothing so beautiful and liberating as sharing your mind with another. With undressing those deepest thoughts and lying mentally naked and vulnerable and exposed to one another. In those moments you find out why love is such a momentous, heart-palpitating explosion of emotions. We are not capable of exposing ourselves in such a way to every soul we meet, so when we find someone that we can give our crazy to, we feel relieved of the solitary burden of it.
Through our exploration of philosophy, and the deeper understanding of ourselves and others, we are also able to approach an intellectual honesty in our relationships that can sometimes be overshadowed by the emotional explosions that are prone to happen. It is a beautiful thing to feel the pulse quicken and the skin tingle and the spreading heat of bodies pressed together, but the true magic of love comes after that.
It comes from the constant exploration of another soul and heart and what lives in the soul and in the heart was birthed in the mind. When you get to a point where you are so comfortable with another that you can sit for hours and pour out the deepest questions and answers of your soul, then you will understand what love is and how it becomes polished gold by philosophy.
Philosophy develops a strength of character and confidence of identity.
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” – Nietzsche
We frequently flounder in our self-identification and direction in life because we have come to accept the reasons and descriptions of life and living from others. We have sacrificed a great deal of our exploration of values, beliefs, and truths in order to play the roles that were handed by friends, family, and society.
Philosophical investigation has a way of emboldening you. It gives you confidence that the ideas that have been given to you by others of how to look at the world are not necessarily the right ideas. It instills in you a healthy sense of rebellious challenge towards the impositions of society’s values and encourages you to find the values that work for you.
Through this rebellion, you find an individual strength that is difficult for others to topple. You find a confidence of identity that is built from foundational stones that you yourself laboriously laid instead of building the structure of your life on the shaky, residual foundations that others tried to have you settle.
You have an obligation and a responsibility to interrogate life in such a way that you become comfortable with the answers. Be satisfied with the answers only after you have scrutinized them, applied them and found the value of them in your own life and your own vision for what you want your life to be. No other way of living will ever make you happy.
But the sense of identity and confidence you build from philosophy should be so strong that it does not require you to impose your beliefs on others. It is a strength and confidence that is open to new ideas, new thoughts and new approaches to living. It is desirous of challenges to personally held ideas and beliefs and is excited to be among others that are equally confident in themselves and ready to respectfully challenge all ideas; even the ones that hold our core together. It is that still, quiet, leisurely confidence of an animal of prey that is full and no longer needs to hunt or feed for the day but is ready for the playful wrestling that keeps it fit.
Philosophy brings us into the world and brings the world into us.
“Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a human.” -Hume
Despite what you might think, philosophy is not merely a personal, solitary activity. It is a constant engagement with the world at large through the action of living aligned with your beliefs and values. Therefore, it is an activity that requires a constant engagement with the world.
It is not enough that you should be a philosopher in this world. It is not enough that you should think deep thoughts and solidify yourself with deep beliefs and values. All of these things are useless if they are not given back to the world in a way that makes the world a human place; a place that you would want to live and a place that you would want to bring others into.
Each and every one of us has a unique philosophical perspective that we have taken from the world. A cobbled together amalgamation of ideas and beliefs and values that are uniquely and distinctly us. Only we could have brought it together in totality, as it is birthed from our unique experiences in the world. As such, only we can give that to the world as our great gift to life and living.
You have the opportunity to change the entire trajectory of your being by figuring out what your meaningful, memorable contribution is going to be to the future of humanity. And you figure that out by digging deep inside yourself and putting together and pulling out your philosophy of living, giving it to the world and letting the world give you its gifts in return.
Be it a small trickling of compassion that you give to a stranger or a torrent of love that you give to your child. Be it the justice you seek to uphold in your life or the forgiveness you give to the people that harm you. Whatever personal philosophy you give back to the world – in whatever way that you do it – that is your contribution to the universe and it will echo through the halls of humanity for longer than your mind can imagine. Be careful in your philosophy and make sure, above all, it is human.
By now you all know my adoration of philosophy as means of personal development. This is especially true of the philosophy of Stoicism, which is seeing a modern resurgence. Perhaps Stoicism’s wisdom and wit resonate with us again because the Stoics existed in a similar time of political and personal upheaval that we see today. Or perhaps it is because the wisdom of the Stoics is timeless in the way that it seeks to help us understand the tumult of our internal struggles. Regardless of the reason for it’s resurgence, I think there is a great deal we can learn from the lessons of Stoic philosophers that can be applied to the anxiety of our day.
Personal development sees a lot of quotes and maxims being thrown around and I would like to briefly explain why, if only to defend my use of them in this article. Quotes and maxims like these are a way to hold on to deeper thoughts and insights in an accessible way. When we recall these quotes we are bringing with them the collected meanings that we have applied to them over the years through our introspection and contemplation. That is what makes quotes and maxims so poignant and important. They are the flowering bushes of a much deeper root structure of understanding and truth. We can carry around the flower but we imply the expanse of roots.
That is the value of aphoristic maxims and quotes. The recitation or recollection of a quote is fortifying because it has so much depth in the meaning of it. So much to strengthen us and nurture us. The value of quotes and maxims is only granted if you think deeply about the words and how they apply to your life, though.
All of the quotes below derive from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus; one of the more popular and intriguing philosophers within the school of Stoicism. I have detailed some of his past in another article that you can find here. For this article, we will explore some of his maxims and detail why they offer you the wisdom that can change your life.
The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.
This has been said in a million ways by a million people, but it is so glaringly true and obvious that it is often dismissed as useless self-help drivel. Well, this is actually evergreen advice and that is why it is so often repeated. You are only as good as the company you keep! The people you keep around you influence you in a million ways. You absorb their positivity and negativity. You absorb their viewpoints and attitudes. Groupthink is a real thing and you can get caught up in some real shady shit if you are hanging out with the wrong people.
Find people who uplift you. Who challenge you intellectually, socially and professionally in positive ways. People who force you to be a better person. People who can cut through your bullshit and hold you accountable. People who would do anything for you; including calling you out when you are not living the life you should be. This might mean cutting some people out of your life and going to find other people who can fill these roles. They are out there. Go find them.
If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
People are going to talk shit about you behind your back. They are going to talk shit about you to your face. It doesn’t matter which you are hearing, if you don’t like the things people are saying about you then you have two choices to make. You first have to get brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself if the things that people are saying are true or not. If they are, and you don’t like those things, then you better go out there and find a way to fix those things.
If the things that people say are not true, then stop giving a shit what they are saying. It doesn’t matter what you do, people are going to talk about you no matter what. Sometimes they will envy the things you do enough that they want to break you because they don’t want to face the monotony and misery of their own lives. Have sympathy for them and move on. Nothing good ever came from worrying about how others view you.
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
All real and dangerous conflict happens internally. External things are going to happen and we give them too much value, ignoring the fact that the real struggle is our relation to those external things that we do not control. Rain is going to fall during your picnic. Illness is going to lay you up. People are going to leave or die or betray you. Life is a swirling storm of bitter winds and tepid breezes and we have exactly zero control over nearly all the things that happen to us, yet we often rage against these storms and try to engage them and thereby try to change them. I am notorious for trying to hold the reigns of a tempest that is so obviously out of my control and dragging me along like a fool, but I have learned to just let go, take shelter in the cozy, calm confines of my mind and adjust my sails to take advantage of the situation. You need to let go of what you WANT to happen and let your reaction be reasonable to what HAS happened.
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
I talked about this in my article about authenticity but it is worthwhile to reinforce it here. I don’t care what you USED to be, every moment in life gives you another opportunity to decide what you WANT to be and go be it. Stop wasting those opportunities. No excuses. No negative self-talk. No bullshit. You decide who you want to be and you go out there and do whatever you have to do to be it. It doesn’t matter about your past or your future. How terrible or grand, how miserable or amazing. Nothing back then or in the future has the sincere power to prevent you from being what you want right now.
I am not saying that there is not some hard work in being what you want to be. Some pain. Some grief. Some loneliness. Some serious effort. You are going to have to decide how bad you want something and then follow through with it. If you want it bad enough you will go get it. There are no shortcuts. There is only a constant movement towards the self that you want to create. Your authenticity is your creation.
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
If there is one single maxim that I have pinned upon my heart from reading the Stoics it is this one. There is no lasting happiness until you accept that the power to create and support happiness is solely within you. All the external things we have no true control over that touch our lives and that we allow to consume us with worry – money, jobs, health, reputation, other people – these things become the subject of all of our consuming worry and become the restless waves we rest our happiness on, and we are thrown around like ships in a storm, at the whim of their inconsistent fury.
Stop worrying about everything you can’t control and shift your focus to the things you can control. Your reactions to things, your relationship to things and your actions towards things. That’s it. That is all you truly have 100% control over. Once you start adjusting your sails to the movements of those internal things you are going to find much smoother sailing and what’s more, you will become a beacon to others to navigate the swirling waters of their own life.
No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
The hard work of personal development, creating a better you, is not in starting, it is in continuing. Through the seasons of your life, the ability to maintain the discipline, work ethic and fortitude it requires to become everything you want and to get everything you want, is the true skill of personal development. All great things take a time to develop, to cultivate, to grow and you must remain patient and steadfast to ensure that they grow right and sturdy. It is all too easy to try and look for the shortcuts in life but in doing so you build a dilapidated hovel of a dwelling. Take the time and put in the hard work to create a temple instead.
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
We do not celebrate those people who gained their positions in life through a lack of struggle. It is the underdogs we root for. The ones that raged against the odds and adversities and came out on top. The ones who never gave up despite the overwhelming odds. These are the people who inspire and motivate us because it gives us hope that our own struggle is something that can be overcome. But there is more to surmounting great difficulties than the glory that comes from it. The internal strength and confidence it creates are the real value. Look at the great struggles you face in your life as opportunities to accumulate great triumph and honest wisdom, both external and internal. These difficulties are the crises of your story; the decisive moments and the turning points that expose your heroism. Do not run from them. Face them. Best them. Own them and never be scared of them again.
You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.
Despite how it may sound, this quote is not about death; it is about beauty. Bodies obviously have a certain, undeniable beauty – faces, eyes, shapely figures and muscled frames – they are instantly appealing things that draw us in, but true beauty, the kind that never fades and is always relevant, is beauty of that little soul you carry around in that aging husk of meat you call a body.
I don’t believe in a soul but I do believe in the things inside me that make me, me. The things that no one else can have or approach. They are the accumulations of my unique experiences and my interpretations of those experiences that have shaped my beliefs, perspectives, and values. That is my soul to me. That is the thing I carry around and the thing I want to be as beautiful as I can make it. Whatever your definition of a soul is, we create the beauty of that soul by cultivating compassion, wisdom, knowledge and love. I am talking about true, actionable, devotion to these things in such a way that the little soul we carry has the capacity to make other little souls in the world that much brighter and more beautiful. Because we all want our little souls to be beautiful.
This is all only a sliver of the wisdom offered by the Stoics. They have so much more to give and I urge everyone to dive deeper into the words of Stoics like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Musonius Rufus and more. You are going to find words that seem to have been birthed by modern thinkers, in modern times, dealing with the modern issues of the world, and that is the true value of Stoic thought – its consistent ability to be relevant to all people, through all time, and give us the means of constantly maturing internally while the world outside seems to be falling apart.
There are days, weeks, months when I am worn. Where I am battered and beaten and stretched so thin that I swear I can see through myself. Where the segments of my heart and my soul that touch the world are translucent and the secret pieces that I keep for myself are pulling away from the bone. The sinew and muscle being separated from their strength leaving me with a weakness that drains the usually deep well of my passion and drive.
I am familiar with this feeling by now. After pushing everything so hard for so long. Running from the demons and chasing the dreams. This is how I get when I neglect myself. When I take on too much and I feel the great imagined weight of responsibility and duty digging into my shoulders like a thin strapped pack laden with bricks.
It is a feeling that creeps in slow at first, hidden behind achievement and accomplishment and the accolades that parade alongside the long hours and the constant struggle of trying to be more and do more. And when I do not catch it early enough it breaks me. It wrecks me and leaves me paralyzed, no longer able to muster the energy to do what must be done and to push through the minor discomforts of stretching for more.
And when I crash against that proverbial wall, everything shatters. I am left picking up the fragments of my motivation and discipline and trying to piece together any sort of direction I can muster. It breaks the borders I have put up to keep out the merciless demons of doubt and I am forced to face them – unarmed and outmaneuvered.
And so I slip into old habits and old complaints. The voice of reason and discipline is silenced by a million howling screams begging me to give up, give in, and get out. Stop the pushing and the pulling. Stop the struggle of achievement. Put aside all your passions and dreams and lie still and silent in the slow breaking dawn of mediocrity so that others with more to offer can have space to give themselves to the world.
Recognize Your Need
But my familiarity with these feelings has given me awareness. A recognition of what to do when these doubts and distractions threaten to strangle the breath of passion from my lungs. I know I need to take a purposeful step back to continue marching forward.
The problem that so many of us face is that we always want to be moving forward and we occasionally forget to bring ourselves with in our progress. We forget that we are human. We forget that we are fallible. We forget that we are sometimes fragile and frail. We forget that we can not always push our own limits without the occasional need to refresh in whatever way we need. And in this forgetting is the potential for a flood of self-imposed pain.
I am often guilty of taking on too much – of stepping so far outside of my comfort zone that I find myself completely lost with no landmarks to guide me back to myself. I get so focused on what I want to be that I lose who I am in the process. And when I get that far out I crumble.
Now, this is not a call to remain in your comfort zone, it is a call to know the utter extremity of your mental and physical limits; the far off reaches that you sometimes brush against to pursue your passions. You have to know those limits and press against them just so much that you gain the otherworldly benefit of breaching your comfort zone, while never falling outside and losing yourself in the void.
Sometimes we must be reminded that we can not win every battle that we fight. We must be strong enough to acknowledge the need for an occasional retreat. And when we know that we are on the verge of fighting a losing battle because we are not properly equipped, we must move back to the safest places that we know so that we can recover and recharge.
How Do We Recover and Recharge?
For some of us, it means blocking out the world and retreating to solitude where we recover ourselves in the quiet and comfort of a steaming cup of tea, a good book, and a purring cat on our laps. We are refreshed in silence and stillness where we are able to draw out the strength from the quiet things that live between the breath and the thought. Our energy is manifested internally and given out to the world. We give it to others throughout the day and we are left with nothing of it to call our own if we do not return to our silent selves on occasion.
For people that draw their energy from others, it is to the consolations of company that they must go for the rejuvenation of their spirits. These people require the action and excitement of socialization in order to recharge. So they put down all of their solitary things and seek comfort in the company of others – in the camaraderie of a meal shared with friends or a group outing of familiar company. They soak up the exhalations of laughter and the energy of others like a sponge, using their tribe as a means to recharge.
It does not matter which one that you are. What matters is that you recognize your recovery method. That you recognize when it is needed and at that time you run towards it with wild abandon so that you do not become so drained that there is no hope for a speedy recovery. Because that is what can happen. If you do not monitor your mind, and the trajectory of your energy, there are times that you will find it impossible to unburden and that is a situation we should all seek to avoid.
Summary
You must recognize the roads of your retreat. Be familiar enough with the slowing of your pace that you know when it is time to step off of the path, not moving backward, but straying far enough from the struggle to recover yourself and by doing so regaining your strength.
It is important and necessary to consistently push outside of your comfort zone, but in doing so, you must be careful not to stay so long that you are lost without a path back to yourself and the healing things that bring you comfort. Know what you need to recover your heart, and your passion, and keep that landmark on the road-map of your progress.
Push through the hard things as often as possible. Revel in your occasional pains and struggles. See them not as limits but as future battles won, but through it all, leave a trail of breadcrumbs to your happy place and return as often as necessary to recharge. The whole of your life will thank you and all the things you want to conquer and vanquish will still be there when you return and what’s more, you will be strong enough to defeat them.
We live in an unprecedented time of information. For better or for worse, we have at our fingertips a constant stream of news and social media. Global, local, personal and private. It comes at us from all angles, and at all times and while I would never be one to deny the importance and opportunity that all this information has to offer us, I will say that constantly consuming all the terrible shit out there is a sure fire way to mental misery.
It is common knowledge that the physical diet you consume will most certainly define your physical health. Eat like shit; feel like shit and look like shit. The same can be said about the media diet you consume. Digest a bunch of shitty news and you are going see your mental health decline in a hurry.
The most dangerous part about the ways and the extent to which we consume media has an impact on our health is that we often do not see the damage it does because it does not show itself in physical ways. With a shitty diet, you can recognize that with an expanding waistline or a lack of energy.
The damage of our media diets is harder to recognize.
It comes in the form of generalized anxiety, irritability, information overload, confusion, depression, and sadness. All non-specific symptoms that can evolve from our habits of our media consumption.
These things can develop slowly and it can be difficult to point to our media consumption habits as the source. But I think it is important to recognize the ways in which that intake can affect your well-being – mentally and physically – and by recognizing them, change them.
Some questions to ask yourself in order to find out if your media consumption is contaminating your life?
Do you wake up in the morning and instantly start scrolling facebook or twitter or Instagram? Do you have feelings of anxiety that seem to come after reading news stories? Does reading bad news seem to ruin your day or set you up for a negative mindset? These are all very real problems that stem from our errant media consumption and that can be remedied by reflecting on and adjusting our consumption habits.
To that ends, I want to explore 5 ways in which we can alter our media consumption habits in order to improve our mental well-being and get our minds back in shape.
Don’t be ignorant but be selective
I would never try to convince you that you should not be up to speed on the critical news of the world, or of your life, but is it really necessary for you to read every single article about a news topic and every single comment about it? Is it really that important that you scroll mindlessly through every one of your friends updates on social media? Is it imperative to your life that you view every picture that someone posts to Instagram? My guess is, no.
I can guarantee that if you are more selective in your consumption that you are not going to miss much. Perhaps it is a matter of simply changing news sources to something less bias or making sure that the news you are getting is reliable and honest. Perhaps it is unfollowing some friends on Facebook or Instagram that don’t really have much to offer except sadness and shade.
You have every opportunity, and in fact, responsibility, to choose what you consume – you can choose the sources, the variety, the duration and the depth. Choose wisely, and as often as possible limit it to only what matters in keeping you informed without having you overwhelmed or inundated with falsity or negativity.
Choose your time to devour
Maybe the best time to hit the newsfeed on Facebook or Twitter is not the first thing in the morning. Your mornings should be a time of peace and tranquility and quiet. A place to set the tone for the day and, if nothing else, have those few moments of solitude that your life allows.
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to not check your phone at all when you wake up. Turn off your alarm and set it aside. Set it to airplane mode before you got to sleep if you usually get a lot of notifications throughout the night. Or better yet, remove the opportunity for app notifications so that you wake up to an uncluttered phone.
Basically, you need to decide what your priority is.
Is your priority everything that is happening out there in the world with others or is it setting the proper intention and peace of mind internally so that you are prepared for the day? Get clear about what is more important to you and if it is the latter, wait until the day has already hardened you before you make it worse by consuming the depressant that is the news.
What does your consumption create?
I recently had the opportunity to attend a great presentation by Sara Young, a local leadership coach here in Wisconsin, and she raised a very thought provoking question during her presentation. She asked, what does your consumption create? I think this is something we should all ask ourselves when we are weighing the value of the things that we consume.
If you are consuming things that do not add any value to what you want to accomplish in life – to what aligns with you – then why the hell are you consuming that thing? If it is not contributing to your future success it is actively diverting you from it. Recognize that and shift your consumption habits appropriately.
Try to make a habit of only consuming things that further your message, your cause, your passion or your dreams. I am not saying that you should have such a laser-like focus that you neglect anything that does not align with your future dreams of success, but turning to things that feed your muse instead of starving it goes a long way towards cultivating a passion driven life that has you reaching for and capturing the magic of your dreams.
Consume positivity
We have a lot of opportunities to filter the crap that we consume on social media. My facebook feed is filled with positive, uplifting and inspirational content. I rarely ever see anything that drags down my spirits or pulls my heart and soul through the dirty shit pile of the standard news cycle. How is this possible?
Easy.
I have joined and followed positive groups, unfollowed or hidden anything or anyone who drains me and made sure to diligently monitor and manicure my feed so that it only feeds me the things that uplift me.
This is really an easy opportunity for anyone to consume such an amazing amount of positivity. It is out there.
We focus so much on the negativity and the hate spewing diatribes of ignorant masses that we sometimes forget that there is a whole other side of the world that is trying to promote peace, tranquility, dialogue and positivity. Find those spaces and drink from them often as they will be a much-needed source of fuel in days that you are struggling to find your motivation or inspiration.
Set limits
How much time to do you spend consuming shit? Between Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, tv, movies, etc., how much time of your life is spent just passively consuming garbage? How can you expect to produce anything worthwhile when you are constantly putting garbage into your head and heart?
Ok. So you can’t go cold turkey. Fine. At least find a way to set limits for yourself so that you are not always surrounded by the blue light glow of information overload.
Give yourself some scheduled time each day to page through your facebook feed or search through a news website. Allow yourself a little time for your favorite show or to share a movie but make sure you set a limit and hold fast to that limit so you can walk away and engage yourself back into your life instead of living vicariously through the rest of the world because that is what happens with overconsumption of shit.
Summary
The truth is, most people are addicted to consumption of news, social media, tv, whatever because they don’t want to be bothered with doing any real living or creating of their own. They use the consumption of media as a replacement for stepping up and creating their own noteworthy achievements or stories. They use it as a replacement for living.
You have to truly make an effort to be more selective in what you consume, while never slipping into ignorance about the world. You need to pick the right times to devour your media and you need to make sure that, whatever it is that you are consuming, is contributing to your creativity and not sucking it dry. You do this by consuming positive things and by setting limits on your consumption so that you have more time to create and contribute instead of constantly being a passive observer of the world.
Is it hard to limit your consumption of shit? Yes. As hard as it is to limit your consumption of terrible food shit. But it is just as necessary for your health to do it. You need to get clear about what you want your life to be and put yourself on the appropriate media diet that helps you achieve it.
It is a common cry that life is short. There is never enough time to do the things we want to do or to get the things we want to get. We are at the mercy of the persistent forward push of time that moves in wilful disregard of the plots and plans that we set for our lives.
But perhaps it is not that our life is short, but that we so blindly squandered it all so it seems that there is little left of it to ourselves.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca had much to say about the supposed great enemy of time in his book “On The Shortness of Life”. Written to his father in law Paulinus, Seneca takes a deep dive into the idea that it is through our constant distraction and giving to meaningless things that we are left with the illusion that time is short and we have not enough of it to accomplish our goals.
To that ends, I believe his thought deserves some exposition in order to help us in identifying the areas of our own lives that may be stealing away the precious moments of our living.
Living vs. Existing
“Aren’t you ashamed to keep for yourself just the remnants of your life?” – Seneca
There is a not so fine line between existing and living. It is not difficult to see in others the boundaries they impose on their existence that prevents them from actually living. It is perhaps a bit harder to recognize those boundaries in ourselves, but it is an important recognition we must make in order to get the most out of the time we are allotted here in living.
If you are alive today, you exist, but you have to ask yourself; are you really living? There is so much of our lives that we sacrifice for the world, leaving so little of it for ourselves. So if you are living, who or what are you living for? Are you living for others? Are you living in your emotions? Are you living for things? Is your life lost in the contemplation of the past or future?
If any of these ways of living sound like you, it may be time to take back your existence and start living for yourself.
Giving to Others
“How much of your time has been taken up by a money-lender, how much by a mistress, a patron, a client, quarreling with your wife, punishing your slaves, dashing about the city on your social obligations.” – Seneca
Perhaps the biggest loss of our time comes in the form of giving it to others. There is obviously an incredible amount of satisfaction and enjoyment that you can derive from giving our time others, but it is important that the time that we give is quality time and it is given to the right people to the right degree.
Consider the time you have spent and wasted in arguing with people you love or giving your time to people who do not find it valuable. It is true that some of our time must be squirrelled away for work, for family, for friends, for loved ones, for obligations we have committed to, but we need not be so quick to offer our time to things that we do not find valuable or to people who have no appreciation regarding the value of our time.
There is no doubt that we all have our certain obligations to society. We have jobs, political affiliations, causes we want to champion. But do you carry these obligations with you every moment of every day, letting them drain you of those all important personal moments that help to stabilize and strengthen your soul? Are your obligations exhausting your ability to fully enjoy your life and the things you want to accomplish? If so, it may be time to distance yourself from them, if only so that you can return later with a renewed strength and purpose.
Giving to Emotion
“How many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses; how much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire. – Seneca
It is a common affliction that we carry with us the residue of so many emotions that are reflections of the past or shadows of the future. We get lost in those emotions and we let them cloud the present moment, allowing it to slip past unnoticed, unappreciated and inexperienced. In that emotional haze is the loss of so much valuable time.
The idea here is not to remove the experience of emotions but to have those emotions contained in the moment of experience and then to let them go, not carrying around the burden of them so much so that they remove you from the experience and enjoyment of the present.
Stoicism is perhaps best well-known for the control and acceptance of emotions. It is a point that is emphasized in every major Stoic writer and one that, if mastered, returns to us the majority of our time. By understanding that we have minimal control over the external factors of our everyday life, we can direct our attention to the internal stirrings of our emotions and by bringing awareness to them, soften them. And when they are softened you can set them down, returning yourself to living without dragging around the lingering weight of those emotions.
Giving to Things
“Vices have to be crushed rather than picked at.” – Seneca
I have always been a man of many vices. I have what is known as an addictive personality. For better or worse it is a part of who I am. I have had my moments of disastrous indulgence through my life and to this day, when I am in on something, I am all in on it.
Thankfully, these days that amounts to more healthy addictions; working out, running, reading and writing but it also includes an addiction to technology, moments of serious gluttony and a not so healthy amount of drinks had with friends on occasion.
Our vices are “things” that can certainly consume our present and give us a sense of lacking the time to chase more noble pursuits. Our vices are bleeding things that seep into nearly all aspects of our life and drive us to action that is unproductive in so many ways.
The first step in preventing “things” from getting in the way of living our lives is to honestly evaluate what sort of things you do right now that steal away the valuable commodity that is your time. Are you tethered to your phone; constantly checking your social media, addicted to the constant stimulation of news and updates and media driven trash? Are you habitually consuming unhealthy foods that make you lethargic and miserable and slowly wasting away your health and energy?
Whatever things you are giving you the majority of your life to, you need to recognize them and, if you are like me, replace them with things that return you to your life. Things that work to stretch your time and make you more productive. Be honest. Be sincere and be ready for withdrawal from the thieving things you give to, but know that it is the only way to return your time to yourself to get the things you truly want.
Giving to the Past and to the Future
“Life is divided into three periods, past present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future is doubtful and the past is certain” – Seneca.
I am guilty of spending a great deal of time traveling between the past and the future and neglecting to stop in the present to enjoy myself there. For those of us with haunted pasts, it is not easy to get lost with the ghosts there. Relieving yourself of those terrible demons is a hard task but a necessary one if we are to leave ourselves with enough time to live in the present.
The future is a melodic siren that can draw us in as well. Singing sweet songs of future triumph and success while leaving us blind to the time we must spend in the present in order to accomplish our future goals.
It is important to reflect on the past in order to avoid repeating mistakes and it is equally important to look forward to the future accomplishments we hope to achieve in order to maintain the passion we have for our projects, but by giving yourself completely to those reveries you neglect the most important time you have right now; the present.
Never overstay your welcome in the past or the future, instead preferring the company of the present and you will find the infinite there that lives in every instant. The present is our only opportunity for accomplishment. It is our opportunity to set yourself up to capture the future self that we imagine. Spend most of your time in the present and you will find that life is longer than you think.
Giving Back to Yourself
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life; it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.” -Seneca
Sometimes you need to step away from all the people and things and emotions and reveries you give your life to. You have to step back and reclaim yourself and by doing so reapply your time and effort to working on the things that truly expand the wealth of your life. By doing this you will find that life is long when it is lived well.
I am not saying there is not tremendous value in giving. It is a wonderful thing to be able to lend your time and energy to the lives of others, but you have to be careful that you do not squander your time, or worse, lose yourself in the process of giving. There is no value in giving to others if you lose yourself in the process, so tread carefully and be frugal with your gifts, giving only to those things and people that are worth be given to.
Summary
Seneca is adamant in saying that nature provides us an ample amount of time to accomplish the things we need to accomplish to build a fulfilling life. It is up to us to prioritize our time to get the most out of it. We do that by making sure that we are not so freely giving of our time to others, to emotion, to things or to our preoccupation with the past and future.
We should be selective of where our time is spent so that, when we lay our head on the pillows at night, we feel that we have we have lengthened our life by using our time in a manner that put the emphasis on the value of it and not the quantity of it. We grow our time by cementing the legacy of our lives through constant, well-intentioned and purpose-driven action towards the passions that we were born to. If we give back to ourselves the time it takes to be personally fulfilled, we will find our lives expand and we will no longer curse the encroachment of time.
