210818 What I learned in my studies this morning

Learning is constant.

Snaring knowledge from aether

As best as I can.

Daily Stoic:

If it doesn't affect my reasoned choice, my living in accordance with Nature, or my virtue (all the same thing), then it does not truly affect me.

That's my goal.  My only goal.  If I achieve that, I can be free.  I can learn to stop worrying and love my life.  I can appreciate each day, admire all beauty, revel in every moment I get to spend with my wife and my children and my family and my friends.

This is what makes a good life.  This is my goal.

Today's Meditation:

From V. Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants by C. K. Chesterton

From Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, Letter LXIII:

This letter is a short treatise on loss and grief.  (Seneca will have more to say on these topics in other letters, e.g. in letter XCIX.)

This is basic Stoic teaching: emotions happen, we cannot prevent that.  We can, however, control ourselves and limit our emotions to their proper place, neither being ignored, nor taking over our sensibilities, nor being used for improper purposes such as demonstration for an audience.

"But but but . . . I miss my friend!!!"

Seneca points out that we miss innumerable moments with our friends when they are alive.  One day, we're near their location, but are busy and don't drop by to visit.  Another and we leave for a trip and fail to look them up before we go. We had myriad moment we might spend with them and yet we chose not to for one reason or another.  Why do we not weep for those lost chances?

The Old Stoic tells the tale of his overwrought reaction to the sudden death of a younger friend (Serenus).  By this point in his life, Seneca is disappointed with his previous actions and pleads that he was unprepared for the loss.  Older now, and wiser for having since examined his thoughts and attitudes in depth, he now understands the process more clearly and recommends to Lucilius the better path.

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Marcus Aurelius had many thoughts on death, loss, and grief as well.  Here are two apt passages:

Meditations 4.17-19: Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good. The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. (Is this fair? Is this the right thing to do?) 

< … > not to be distracted by their darkness. To run straight for the finish line, unswerving.

People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out. But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do you? And I don’t just mean when you’re dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise, except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable? “You’re out of step—neglecting the gifts of nature to hand on someone’s words in the future.“

Meditations 5.24: Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.

Amor Fati.