Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 12.21 (Hicks and Hicks) Memento mori .  There's no such thing as a legacy beyond a generation or so and perhaps a hundred years. And that's if you are extraordinarily lucky. Past lucky. Statistically beyond the pale. Do good now. Be known for my good now, instead of hoping for recognition later. Neither is up to me, but one is much more likely to have a positive impact on my community and to fulfill my desire to be excellent.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 12.20 (Hicks and Hicks) We should benefit the whole. It should be as automatic as my desire to see the person first. If I can train myself in that approach, I can train myself in this.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 12.19 (Hicks and Hicks) What is driving me? Whether it's to eat too much or to seek inebriation or to snap at a kid or give half effort on a tadh. Doesn't matter. Identifying the source of the impulse will help me take the time to control it better. So take the time!

Today's Meditation(s): " Cry once and remember it forever. " (My friend on why he spends freely on friends and experiences.)  He's collecting memories, experiences with his favorite people. Saving it cost one their virtue, it's not a bad way to approach life.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 12.18 (Hicks and Hicks) A reminder to use reason to understand. To look at the roots and the scope. The hows and the whys. It's not always about ethics.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 12.17 (Hicks and Hicks) Nice when it's pithy. And clear. And clearly right. A top ten entry.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 12.14 (Hicks and Hicks) Nothing can take my virtue, my excellence, without my capitulation. Everything else is hostage to the whims of physics and power, fate and fortune. But my mind is my own. " Take my love, take my land Take me where I cannot stand I don't care, I'm still free You can't take the sky from me " Firefly Theme (by Sonny Rhodes)

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 12.9 (Hicks and Hicks) Take my tools with me. Discernment. Reason. Wisdom. Justice. Courage. Temperance. Acceptance. Concern. Generosity. Care. Kindness.

Today's Meditation(s): I've Been Thinking by Daniel Dennet ~ Daniel Dennet quoting his friend and musician Stanley Lewis   Sometimes transcendence exists exactly because it will not last. If it were effable, it would be effed.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 12.6 (Hicks and Hicks) Train myself in the good ways even if it's awkward. Or unsure of reward. Or embarrassing. Practicing virtue when it's hard is when it counts most. "I don't count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they're the only ones that count." ~ Muhammad Ali

Today's Meditation(s): "3 years, X months, Y days including the end date." More than the 'three and a half' I usually quote. Less then the four he really almost was. ...being understood—even after our best efforts—is never going to be fully up to us.... But if being understood is not in our control, there is something quite wonderful that is in our control: Understanding.... Most importantly, we can do this for our own children, right here, right now. We can try to really see them, really listen to them. Our own pain and our own loneliness has an upside—it teaches us the value of being understood, how much it means, how even a little of it can go a long way. And yet today I avoided interacting with my kids for selfish reasons. Way to go, dad! Tomorrow is my chance to do better. Time to be better.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 12.2 (Hicks and Hicks) Examine myself to identify my shortcomings and errors that I may address then. That's the crux of it I do all this because it helps me remember the basics of why I so do this. To. Get. Better.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 11.36 (Hicks and Hicks) In theory, my inner citadel can never be breached. If it is, it's because I surrendered it, it's because I chose to open the gate. In practice, it's the same. But it's hard to avoid temptation and distraction. And it's effortless to abandon the walls and lose myself in pursuits of wrath or pride, lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, envy or any of the other popular sins nowadays.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 11.25 (Hicks and Hicks) It's a skill I can improve. It's lessons I can learn. It's actions I can practice. It's a life I can pursue. But I must pursue. It doesn't happen by accident.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 11.31 (Hicks and Hicks) Waterfield glosses this with: I do this as well: offer a quote out of context because it is a secret thing for only me to know. And later, if I reread the passage, I have no idea what I was trying to say, reinterpret the quote to my current heart, and move along.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 11.32 (Hicks and Hicks) I do this: quote things with a word or phrase altered to fit my meaning. Generally, I am dragging behind me the bag of implications and innuendos that come with the original. The setting and situation of the original pack extra meaning into what I am saying. But not always. Sometimes it's meant to stand on its own as a new phrase or aphorism. A new meaning. A new understanding. Up to you to figure it out.

Today's Meditation(s): From Reddit: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is a great rule of thumb for preventing hasty conclusions, but it is incomplete. In epistemology and Bayesian logic, if you look for something where it absolutely should be and find nothing, that failure to find it is positive evidence that it doesn't exist. The Elephant in the Room: If someone claims there is a full-grown African elephant in your living room, you would expect to see it, hear it, and see structural damage to your floorboards. If you look around and see none of these things, the absence of evidence is overwhelming evidence of absence. What you find instead, is liars and con men who insist the elephant is invisible when you can't see it, weightless when you put down a scale, heatless when you measure temperature, out side of time when you look for actions, and outside of reality when it effects nothing... but if you have 'faith' in their claims, you get a reward t...

Today's Meditation(s): The action the belief compels is evidence, but it doesn't constitute as evidence by purely materialist standards. Picked up from a Reddit thread, but what does it mean? Materialists are missing out? But would a materialist really ignore behavior? They'd ignore the belief, surely, but the action, the behavior? That has to be part of the program, right? Ignore this entry.

Today's Meditation(s): "Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito. ( Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.)" Virgil, Aeneid, 6. 95  A thought I think at times and one of my favorite quotes. The personal motto of Ludwig von Mises. I have this engraved on my wallet.

Today's Meditation(s): "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.  And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil." ~ Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Good and evil exist in all of us. It's up to us to choose. I try to train myself to make that choice more naturally, more easily, more automatically. It doesn't work as often as it should, but it has become surprisingly automatic in many areas.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 11.26 (Hicks and Hicks) Marcus. Epictetus. My dad. I've been thinking about my dad a lot recently, what with Father's Day and all. He was as good a man as I could hope to know. And at the end of his life, he was afraid. Afraid of what was going to happen to him after. Would he go to heaven? Would he go to hell? He was truly, deeply, afraid. If he doesn't qualify, no one does. I love you, Dad. And I miss you. And I hope I can live up to your example.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 6.30 "The fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.” Meditations , 6.30 (Long) And that is what I give to my children: the desire for and goal of, in fact, possessing a good character and doing things for the common good. This is my Father's Day present to myself.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations, 11.19 (Hicks and Hicks) Four temptations of the mind. Unserious, divisive, and external thoughts. Finding my own acts vicious. I need to use these warnings and improve my behavior, be better.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 11.18 (Hicks and Hicks) Living in a pretend world is dangerous and stupid, ineffective and counterproductive. Assholes exist. Deal with it. But deal with it with wisdom, not wrath.

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations , 11.18 (Hicks and Hicks) Anger and violence are not qualities of a man. They are certainly qualities of men  — the wild portion of our species that has long been the more aggressive — but not of those who truly deserve the title.  Real power, real strength is quiet because it can afford to be quiet. It doesn't need bravado or recklessness to do the things it means to do. Real power simply does them and others adjust to the new reality. Beware the person who is quiet and composed in the face of conflict and opposition. They have the ability to make things happen despite the clamoring rabble of pretenders.