210217 What I learned in my studies this morning

Today's Tao:

Knowing ignorance is strength. 

Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

From The Daily Stoic: 

 

“It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.”—Epictetus, Discourses, 3.24.17

Yearning. Waiting for happiness until after I get / find / buy the next thing. How many Big Things have I waited for in my life?  I'll be happy as soon as...

Graduation. The car. Marriage. The house. The new floor. The new computer. The list could go on forever, right? 

It robs me of my happiness now. Time to start living for accepting happiness now instead of waiting to be happy when I get the next Big Thing. 

From Eric Hoffer, PART 4 Beginning and End:  

Men of Words 

Men of Words — activists, artists, authors, experts, playwrights, politicians, priests, professors, pundits — all exclaim a profound pity for the poor and the downtrodden. Yet most, if not all, would sell that concern for a title or position, an appointment to some board or committee. 

Once they feel recognized for their brilliance, their care and goodwill evaporate.  They "learn" that those in power (be they ancien régime or Movement nouveau) are necessary, foretold, or ordained by God and the masses should just shut up and obey. 

(The True Believer, XV-105)