Today's Meditation(s): ...men who enter the other professions have not had their souls corrupted beforehand and have not learned the opposite of what they are going to be taught, but the ones who start out to study philosophy have been born and reared in an environment filled with corruption and evil, and therefore turn to virtue in such a state that they need a longer and more thorough training.  ~ Musonius Rufus, Lecture 6.3 If simply because I know it's a journey that never stops. I'm traveling it anyway.  And I'll be more successfully, if my motives are to be more virtuous and I follow Nature using my ruling faculty, my reason, and my virtues. It's taken me a long time to even be able to write that sentence without a cheat sheet. I'm working on things. And despite formal training and years of independent study and lab practical field work testing approaches to morality, I have no illusions about how far I've come and how much I've yet to go.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.49 (Hicks and Hicks) Do not multiply entities beyond necessity . ~ William of Ockham See what is there without catastrophizing, without rose-tinted glasses. Be honest with myself. No matter how disappointing or enticing.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.47 (Hicks and Hicks) If I can't, accept it  Easy to say. Whether it's because of need or desire or loyalty or anything else, wanting reality to not be as it is is a common refrain. I often do well at this aspect of Stoicism. It's a lesson I stress for my kids.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.47 (Hicks and Hicks) How many faults great canyons by habit make? My most egregious errors are still here, stumbling around my character heedless of attempts to fix them. They return and return.  I should feel worse about this.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 8.45 (Hicks and Hicks) I wish I were as confident in my Stoicism and capability to accept my fate.

Today's Meditation(s): It was Epictetus who said that the whole point of philosophy was to be able to meet whatever life threw at you with, “This is what I trained for.” No one just magically steps up in the big moments. No, we revert to our level of training. Our true character comes out under pressure. So we must train that character, we must develop our bodies, we have to put in the work.   ~ The Daily Stoic 260424 My chances of success increase if I follow Nature, use my reason, worry about things up to me, focus on virtue, and care for my community. But it's not about success. It's about the pursuit.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.43 (Hicks and Hicks) Said the Emperor to himself. How much more humble should I be?

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 8.43 (Hicks and Hicks) From one of the most powerful men in the world.  And these are the desires he wants for himself. I try to follow such desires.  To strip away adding conclusions to what happens. To acknowledge what is going on, without shirking or shrinking. To think of my fellows first. To make their needs important to me.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.41 (Hicks and Hicks) Love my fate. Desire what happens to happen. Nothing else could have been. Nothing needed be.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.39 (Hicks and Hicks) And one tired to rule them all. Physical ailments assail me today. I've avoided complaint to a degree, but I still grumbled to my wife. If only self-control was the right tool to assuage my pains.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.36 (Hicks and Hicks) Only now imposes on the world. Always now. Not as important as I think it is. It's just a moment. It's just met moment. Not even shared, truly.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.14 (Hicks and Hicks) How can I wish for a world without fools? Such a thing cannot exist. I waste my time and effort in pursuit of it, generating only frustration and vexation. Be understanding. Accept faults graciously.  Help correct where I can. Accept and withdraw when I cannot. Be kind throughout.

Today's Meditation(s): You swear you were just in your twenties and now, here you are, looking at an invite to your twenty-year reunion. You remember those early months of the pandemic like it was yesterday, except it wasn’t just yesterday, it was six years ago.The 2020s are more than halfway done. The century is more than 25 percent done!  ~ The Daily Stoic 260417 I was just thinking this morning, before I read TDS, about how time flies. How I was two-thirds way through the drive to work before I noticed it was Friday and the week had disappeared.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 8.35 (Hicks and Hicks) At least it can be a lesson....

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.29 (Hicks and Hicks) It's never as easy as Marcus et al. make it sound. Just decide. Just change. Just reject. Just nothing. It's hard. Recognition comes first. Tough to see passion from the inside. Tough to discover the mind fog when it has you blanketed under darkness. Tough to strip away illusion, assumptions, mistakes, urges and find reality. Then comes analysis. What, exactly, is the issue? What is my impulse or passion demanding? Why does it seem like the only, the best, reaction ? What will it take to turn it into action . Now, to do it. To convince myself, despite seeming evidence, that this is not the right way to act. That I must pause, reconsider, develop, and execute a better plan. Not one of these steps is easy in the moment. But they are 8mportant.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 8.26 (Hicks and Hicks) That's just four things.... I do these. Not so well. Should do better But I am working on finding my faults, accepting that they are faults, and trying to make them better. Searching them out. Asking for help. Meaning it.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.25 (Hicks and Hicks) We are butt dust.... We return and recycle. To be taken up again into whatever needs our atoms next. Dirt. Plant. Animal. Water. Air. Rock. Who knows? Who cares? I certainly won't.

Today's Meditation(s): Stop bothering them. Stop making your worries their problem. If you want to serve them, be steady. Be present. Be someone they can talk to. Daily Dad 260410 I try to be. I listen I talk. I care. I challenge. I advise I sit in silence. 8 tell stories. I discuss things. I answer questions. I try not to dump my worries on them, though I also try to make sure they understand that serious things happen and what's important is how we respond.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 8.22 (Hicks and Hicks) Be good now. Ahora mismo.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.21 (Hicks and Hicks) Wrong time. Wrong place. That's why we're alone. That's why there's nobody out there.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.19 (Hicks and Hicks) Primal Scream feels personally called out.* What is my purpose? Is this a mission statement exercise? I'm here to help humanity be.. ... To be virtuous? Yes. To focus on my command center, my reason? Yes. To follow Nature? Yes. But what is my specific purpose? Be a good person. Raise good kids. Be a good husband. Be a good friend. Be a good coworker. Be a good neighbor.  Be a good stranger. Help people. Be kind. ===== * I wonder, on the off chance that anyone besides AI finds this, if future historians wonder about that one? Or are we so thoroughly recorded and documented that it'll be obvious?

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.18 (Hicks and Hicks) We are all the stuff of stars. I will be recycled into new things, just as I was made, and am continually remade, from things prior.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.16 (Hicks and Hicks) It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to . . . accept instruction readily. Sadly, this is all too often incorrect. Myself included. It's hard to accept I'm wrong. It's tough to admit,  openly admit, I'm misinformed or my logic is faulty or my thoughts simply don't match reality. I try to accept correction gracefully. It doesn't always work.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.15 (Hicks and Hicks) I remind myself of this dictum often. How am I wishing to live in a world where uncaring people don't exist? Where boors and the inconsiderate are extinct? Or that inconveniences and accidents do not occur? As soon expect to wake in a world of candyfloss clouds and marmalade skies. These people, these things, these situations. . .  they do exist and I must deal with them at any time.  So stop wasting time, effort, energy, and brainpower to thwart the stars.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 8.9 (Hicks and Hicks) It's hard to love my fate. Harder still to love it enough not to grumble. Not even inside my head? Not even there. It shouldn't matter that the life I would grumble about is not in a Palace. By reason they are the same. Even if I expand the scope beyond reason, the Palace is likely a bit more. . . .   everything than my life. Including more stress and more anxieties. And more responsibilities.