I have made no secret about my appreciation for the philosophy of the Existentialists. I gravitate towards their ideas of personal freedom, authenticity, and responsibility as a means towards personal discovery and development and I have written a great deal about them in previous articles.
A tree sways its thick branches overhead, waving to me in my lying repose. I stare up through the green canopy of leaves and watch the sun steal in among the movement, stabbing it’s bright heat to the forest floor and warming the fragrant pine needles that have accumulated like a mattress.
I run through the woods like a wolf. Pulled fast on feet that barely touch the ground and with the hungry eagerness of a predator chasing prey.
Throughout our lives we are asked to take on many roles. Parents. Siblings. Employees. Spouses. Friends. Lovers. All of these roles come with certain expectations of action and responsibilities of being, and most of us adopt these expectations and responsibilities without giving much thought about what it actually means for our identities, our personal freedom, our responsibility, and our self-expression.
We are moving into the season of change – of renewing our commitment to transformation and of reasserting our dedication to a better life.
In his book Twilight of the Idols or How To Philosophize With A Hammer, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche says; “From life’s school of war: What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” Nearly all of us have run across some version of this pithy aphorism before.
If you poke around my blog, my Facebook page, or my Instagram feed you are bound to find out that I am really into two things, philosophy and fitness.
Ah, existential questions. Those rising, dreadful things that strike at you in the dark moments of tragedy or introspection and strip away the fleeting illusions of life revealing the truth of absurdity.
I hold a largely unpopular belief. I believe every person that exists is, by rights, a philosopher. I also believe that the most interesting and important thing about any person is their unique philosophy.
The Stoic philosophers of Greece and Rome proposed a great many practices that were meant to be folded into one’s life to help them reach the ideal states of equanimity, fortitude and wisdom that was the goal of the Stoic Sage.
