Today's Meditation: Meditations (trans. Hicks and Hicks), 6.39 Yet Stoicism is a cold and heartless philosophy. Pshaw. Those who think thlis need but read the Meditations, even superficially, to learn otherwise. It could be said any planer or more often that a major thrust of the thought is bent to oikeosis  — concern and help toward others. We are all alike. We are all part of humanity. We are all meant for one another.

Today's Meditation: Meditations (trans. Hicks and Hicks), 6.31 How much of my suffering is self-made? How much more do I worry and fret about things that haven't happened? That may never happen? That likely won't happen?  Things I make up to worry about above and beyond what's actually happening in my life? Limit my assumptions. Focus my thoughts. Ignore the little voice that invents things just to bother me. Stop allowing imaginary things, things almost universally not up to me, to cause stress and strife. Focus on reality. Reality, while not always to my liking, at least is real enough for me to try and change it for the better.

Today's Meditation: Meditations (trans. Hicks and Hicks), 6.30 Respect Nature. Be kind. Be helpful. Be good. 'Don't be a dick' and that shall be the whole of the law .

Today's Meditation: Meditations (trans. Hicks and Hicks), 6.26 Fighting with the world because it's not how I wish it to be is a fool's errand. My car won't run if I don't put gas in it. Why am I getting frustrated that I have to put gas in my car? It's how the world works, whether I like it or not. I may as well be mad that gravity holds me to the ground when I want to fly or let myself become pissed that I don't already know the contents of a book I haven't yet read. It never makes things better. In fact, it often deliberately makes things worse. Oh but I feel better, right? My righteous offensensitivity is assuaged . . . while I've just created three more problems to deal with. And,despite knowing this, I do it anyway. More stupid me.

Today's Meditation: Meditations (trans. Hicks and Hicks), 6.24 We all possess the same fate . . . and we don't know what it is. Eternal recurrence? Dissolution into atoms? Becoming one with everything? Cloud nine? Fiery pits? Nothing? So live this life as best I can. While I'm here, do what I can, give what I can, teach what I can, love who I can. The future is uncertain. Be good today.

Today's Mediation: Meditations (trans. Hicks and Hicks), 6.21 And so, I wait for instruction.

Today's Meditation: Letters on Ethics: to Lucilius by Seneca (trans. Graver and Long), 3.2 Thus my immediate prior actions and attitude.

Today's Meditation: Letters on Ethics: to Lucilius by Seneca (trans. Graver and Long), 2.6 Want less, have enough. There's no limit to cupidity. Want  expands to outstrip supply. My desire will always exceed my grasp, if let it. So that's part of my job: control my avarice, throttle my avidity. If I want equanimity, I must be content with what I have.

Today's Meditation: Letters on Ethics: t o Lucilius by Seneca (trans. Graver and Long), 2.4 Read great writers. Read great books. Read to absorb. Read to know . Don't just read. Read well. Back to my Stoic root with Seneca's Moral Letters.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 51.3 Live like it.  Not him, but live like it anyway. Make the right decision each time, even in the little things. Every time. Don't backslide. Don't give up. Don't give in. Do it and be better for it.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 51. 2 Prokopton. One making progress. Obey the law. Not the law. The LAW. The rule of reason, the principles of oikeosis and following Nature, the use of the four cardinal virtues in my pursuit of excellence of spirit.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 51. 1 Stop putting off what I need to do to live virtuously.. To keep with my recent trend, even if my friend disappears and I never learn what I did that hurt him enough to dissolve decades of close friendship, I should still look at myself and think about how I treat my others. When someone I trust implicitly tells me I'm being an asshole, I should believe him and focus on examining, diagnosing, and treating my fault(s). Obviously, I'm doing something seriously wrong and don't realize it. So let's root that shit right out. I'm not fool enough to think that he's just wrong and I'm fine and it's all good. I've got work to do.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 51. 1 Working on the premeditatio malorum nowadays. Coming to grips with potentially losing my oldest friend. I won't even know until he reaches out to me . . . if he does. And I still don't know what I did / have done that upset him so. So I think about how it's not up to me. (Making things will be up to me, given me chance.) I think about how my life won't end. That there are still people who will love me. That I will still have my wonderful wife, my wonderful children, my other friends, my job, my command center, my virtue. But I don't want to have to do life without him. He's a huge part of why I am who I am. We studied philosophy together. He gave me my first copy of Seneca's Letters . He's been part of every major event in my life since elementary. We were planning on growing old, our families and us together. Even if this costs me years, at least don't cost fore...

Today's Meditation: And if you choose to hold fast to what is right, do not be irked by difficult circumstances, but reflect on how many things have already happened to you in life in ways that you did not wish, and yet they have turned out for the best. ~ Musonius Rufus, Fragment XXVII Things are tough if you choose virtue. I've told my kids this. As much as I work to help mold them into good people, I don't hide from them that this is walking a harder path. It's deliberately choosing to put some things high on their priorities which are sometimes going to cause them frustration or subject them to peer pressure because they, hopefully, are choosing the virtuous way. "I'm not saying it will be easy. I'm saying it will be worth it." Art Williams "It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day, that's the hard part. But it does get easier." BoJack Horseman, Season 2 Ending

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 48a Premeditatio malorum . Have I lost my best friend? If I have, is it a bad thing? Has it harmed my virtue? Directly, no. Potentially? Maybe, though only if I let it. He helped me begin my journey into philosophy. He helped me learn. He helped be a better person. Will I simply 'return' him to the universe? Will I at least get a chance to leave things on the best terms possible, perhaps open to future repair?

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 45 Limit my speculations. Focus on what is known without assigning credit or blame. Things just are, even when I don't weigh in on their worth.

Today's Meditation: When my friend of 45 years tells me I'm being an asshole, I should listen.  So last night I did serious harm to my oldest friendship.  I just wish I'd known in time to do something about it. I'm still not 100% sure what I did, but it must have been building for a while now. Then last night was the proverbial straw. The hardest part right now is waiting. He said he needed space so I'm respecting that. But I've so much to say, to appeal. Things to defend my actions, though I don't know what actions and defense is the worst thing I could do. Now is the time for reflecting on our history and relationship. Not to defend myself but to figure out where I've gone wrong and what I can do to make it up to him. Listening to him, examining my behavior, and accepting I'm wrong, without attempts to deflect or lessen the blame, is the right course. Now to do that and then wait until I'm allowed to show how I can be, am , a better friend.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 43 And that's what I'm trying to do to repair my relationship with my best friend. Find the right handle to pick up this turd of a situation I've created.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 41 I need to disagree here. Plenty of good  things, good mental and spiritual things, come from physical activity. Perhaps he meant not to put an undue emphasis on it.....

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 38 Seems tautological, given Stoic definitions.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. by Robin Waterfield), 33.9 If this isn't the easiest one to remember.....

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robin Waterfield), 30 If I stay steady, hold on to my morals and virtue, then nothing bad will happen. It will work out and I [should be / will be] satisfied with whatever may come.

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion (trans. Robert Dobbins), 13 Be wise. Don't seek to be known as wise. Keep working on myself no matter what progress I feel I've made. If I feel adequately virtuous, why hold myself to a high stsndard if I've done so well so far?

Today's Meditation: The Enchiridion  (trans. Robert Dobbin), 12.2 Premeditatio Malorum . Consider what evil may come.  Foretell it. Foresee it. Imagine it. Pre-live it. Expect it. Accept it. Even small things that seem barely worth a thought upset me all too often. Not a big upset. But still noticable. I snap at my family. I feel like hitting a wall (but don't). I yell at someone in another car or flip them the bird. But why? Why sell my peace so cheaply? Why impose my impatience on my family? Or influence someone else's life negatively because I'm acting like a child who cannot hold his temper? I should be better than that.

Today's Meditation: The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (ed. by Melvin McLeod), The Buddha Is it the suffering or the shared nature that draws the compassion? Or both? Will I be able to find my inter-being (to use Thich Nhat Hanh's word) with the Buddha? What will that mean? What would that entail? So, the Buddha was a man who suffered in life, just like me. Guess I've truly got something to meditate on this evening.