If you don’t have a direction, a lofty aim, that challenges you and brings out your best, do something about that.
Category: quotations
Change happens
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” –Alan Watts
Flow with it. Don’t resist.
Be willing to let go of what was for what is and what will be.
Adaptability to change is more powerful than cleverness or strength.
Improvise
Your life is daily improv.
Be willing to trust that you will come up with something worthwhile when your moment comes.
Think of those cliche icebreaker activities where everyone goes around a circle and answers the same question, like “What’s your favorite book?”
The activity is designed to have people get to know each other better. But what really happens?
You’re acting like you’re paying close attention to what everyone is saying, but you’re actually rehearsing in your mind what you will say when it’s your turn.
What if, instead, you emptied your mind and focused completely on the others? When your turn came you would have to trust that something intelligible would come out of you.
In fact, the spontaneous, improvised response is likely to be more effective than the one you would have contrived.
Your life is now. Strengthen your improv muscles by showing up regularly and being as fully present as you can be.
Say “Yes” to whatever circumstances you find yourself facing. Trust that the life you’ve lived has prepared you for this moment.
Just keep swinging
“My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly, the only thing to do was keep swinging.” —Hank Aaron
Have a bias for action.
Do something rather than nothing.
Even a step in the wrong direction is better than standing still.
You don’t have to feel right to act. Just do what you think is best.
Don’t wait on inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs.
If you’re in a slump, don’t stand at the plate with your bat on your shoulder, hoping for ball four.
Swing.
And keep swinging.
The true art of life
In a gentle way
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
–Mahatma Gandhi
Fuming and stomping around and violence and outrageous behavior may get headlines and clicks.
But the most profound ideas and rapturous creations and the big-hearted movements that actually propelled our species forward all emerged originally from a quiet place and came in a gentle way.
Bertrand Russell on the good life
Kottke posted a link to University of Utah professor Matt Might’s thoughtful career and life advice.
There is so much worth pondering in that post. But the career applications especially stand out.
Might’s academic career floundered when he saw his work as a means to an end. But his work flourished when he did work for its inherent value and for its meaning to him.
Focus on being awesome, not on being successful.
And he shared a portion of this quote:
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Knowledge and love are both indefinitely extensible; therefore, however good a life may be, a better life can be imagined. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life.” –Bertrand Russell
So good.
Love and knowledge. Beauty and truth.
Indefinitely extensible.
Inexhaustible.
Enough to fill a life.
A good life.
All we know
Sunday night Stoic: Think on these things
I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of the late Christopher Hitchens’s autobiography, Hitch-22: A Memoir. Hitchens was notable for his eloquence and strongly stated opinions on controversial topics.
He was no man of faith, but tells in his memoir that he chose the scripture reading for his father’s funeral. It was Phillipians 4:8:
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
I was reminded of what an excellent verse it is. And it could just as easily look like a line pulled straight from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. It has a clear Stoic shine to it.
This line from Paul’s letter would be a fine bit of scripture for anyone’s memorial service.
When I was a young man, I wrote a personal mission statement that began with this line:
“Pursue truth no matter the cost.”
I regularly have fallen short of that audacious aim. Often the cost of such a pursuit is more than I’m willing to pay. But that pursuit challenges me even more now.
I’m no scientist or activist. I’m not on any heroic, risk-filled quest to right wrongs. But I still care deeply about being true and honoring honest inquiry and letting go of comfortable fictions that only obscure reality.
I want to retain the curiosity that compels discontent with mere conventional wisdom and popular opinion.
I want to fill my mind with what is true and honest and just and pure and lovely.
These are the things most worthy of our attention.
We are all actors
I’m listening to Mark Maron’s WTF podcast interview with Sir Ian McKellen. McKellen is the eminent Shakespearean actor who is better known currently for his recent film roles as Gandalf.
In his conversation with Maron, McKellen speaks passionately about his appreciation of the works of Shakespeare. And he focuses on one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines: “All the world’s a stage…”
“If you understand that about human beings, that we are all actors, it will illuminate your life… When you get up in the morning, you decide what costume you’re going to wear.” –Sir Ian McKellen
We are all actors. Life’s a play, and you get to perform a role.
But you don’t have to play the role you’ve been handed or that you’ve fallen into.
You can invent your own character in this play. And you can keep reinventing yourself as often as you want.
Be who you want to be. Act as if you are who you wish you were.
It’s just a play.
Put your all into your part of it.
Enjoy the show.
Witness to the universe
“If I ask myself ‘What is life for?’ I have to answer: ‘Wrong question.’ You don’t ask how your foot knows to push the blood in your toes back up to your heart. It happens, but your foot doesn’t know how it knows to do it. Life isn’t for anything, but it does matter. We are a witness to the universe. We are the witnesses to each other. We believe each other into being. We generate things and people that matter to us and to others. Human life is such a bizarre, endlessly complex riot of emotions and processes; it is amazing to be one.” –Jennifer Michael Hecht
This is one of many thoughtful responses in a BuzzFeed article on finding meaning in a seemingly indifferent universe.
Humility
“The first product of self-knowledge is humility.” –Flannery O’Connor
Self-importance diminishes as self-awareness increases.
The more you know, about yourself and the universe you swim in, the more you realize how much you don’t know. About anything.
If you’re feeling like you are big time, you’re wrong.
And you’re heading in the wrong direction.
Spiritual affinity
This was one of the readings at my wedding 13 years ago today:
“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity. And unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created in years or even generations.” –Kahlil Gibran
A bold statement that may not apply so universally, but it has been true for me.
Merlyn’s lesson: Keep learning
Merlyn’s lesson to young Arthur in T.H. White’s The Once And Future King:
“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”
“The tree of knowledge and the fountain of youth are one and the same.” –Lewis Lapham
Happiness is a hack
Happiness is a hack, not a default state. You have to overcome your programming to find the joy potentially present in the mundane, in each moment.
Huxley: Act decidedly
There is a bit of magic in just taking action.
It’s better to do something than to do nothing.
If you end up going in a wrong direction, you can course correct as necessary.
Don’t hesitate. Make up your mind and go.
Ashamed to die
“Until you have done something for humanity you should be ashamed to die.” –Horace Mann
The lucky ones
Richard Dawkins from his book, Unweaving The Rainbow:
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”
The limits of the possible
“Do not aspire to immortal life but exhaust the limits of the possible.”–Pindar
My aspiration should be to fulfill my potential, to be the most excellent version of myself possible.
Posterity, my reputation when I’m gone, is beyond my control. And what does it matter anyway?
Life here and now is enough for me. I’ve not come close to exhausting my limits.
But every day offers a new chance and a fresh start.
What’s possible tomorrow? How can I be even slightly better than I was today?
Perspective
The big picture provides perspective.
Regularly seeing yourself in the context of the universe—just how small and insignificant you really are—will nudge you back off the ledge.
You are unique. There has never been and will never be another you. Be the best expression of you you can be.
But you are just an infinitesimally small part of the universe. It doesn’t spin around you. It’s mostly indifferent to you. It will go on just fine with or without you.
And maybe that should hurt my ego, but instead it frees me to not take myself too seriously.
Thinking this way can free us to just enjoy the ride and relish our good fortune to have made it onto the stage in our bit part in this grand cosmic extravaganza.
Excellent Journey 