The Stoic
Meeting You Where You are At
Maybe we live our life in seasons too, times where you are more or less you. Scroll back through and see when there were years and months where you got it right, everything was clicking. We have all been there. We still get updates of social media memories; you bend and stretch your mind to wrap around who this other person is. You try to reason who you were. They feel disparate from each other, don’t they? Why is that? Do we change all that much? Or does it have more to do with a lack of direction?
We get lost in the many faces of selves because we don’t really know ourselves. Have you taken the time define, sculpt out some individuality? Or are you smooth, unworked, victim to the tides.
I haven’t quite made it there either. As much as I try to avoid the truth of it, my life is in seasons of hyper production or minimal effort, equinoxes with no equilibrium. I do my best to minimize the windows between. I aim for moderation, temperance to manage sustainability. More preferable than anything is excellence in virtue.
In short, I want to be a capable human being, plain and simple.
Doesn’t everybody?
In You XII I spoke about overreaching as an optimistic tool towards becoming an ambitious person. I think it is prudent to clarify that sentiment as nothing more than recognizing that tendency in myself. In fact, each entry in this project is is a very public journal. It is a modern Meditation to sketch out my thoughts. If Stoicism is a practical philosophy then this is me in practice. If I can add to the examples of active amateur philosophers then I have achieved what I wanted to in joining Substack.
So, no, overreaching is not ideal at all, but it can turned towards utility if needed. At its worst it creates false starts and burnouts. At its best, it occasionally becomes a tool (not sustainable). This goes back to the idea of the Golden Mean. If I had any other choice than to start over each season and overreach then I would. I would set SMART goals through to the end, and achieve incrementally, but I don’t. There again is the ambiguity and lack of dichotomy I spoke of last week. No things are ever just one way or another. In respect to living out my morals, when I am on my course discipline comes easy, when I am off the rails it crashes catastrophically.
Then again, idea may not be to prevent the seasons of life from happening. Adjusting and changing with the seasons is living in accordance with nature. Would anyone want an eternal spring? Sublime happiness is so valuable because it is fleeting.
Wherever you are now is your origination: a starting point. The scale starts over every day. In each task of the day there is a proving ground, a grinding of the crucible. Life is a constant proof of self and developing of the same. Maybe we are spring flowers that sprout back through frost, bloom to drop petals, and then die again, only to be back in the following season.
What could be more in accordance with nature than the consistent cycle of flowers? I am not trying to be contrarian with this idea; it is clarification in following my thought process. It is a tangled web of blurry truths and justifications that I attempt to sort out in these articles.
A person needs to stand on their own, not be propped up.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations,3-5
Genetic Potential
While you can incrementally improve your discipline, lessen your wasteful time, and work to adjust your disposition, there are inherited traits beyond your control. At the end, there is a cap to how much you can really change; at a certain point you are set with yourself. The most Stoic thing to do is not to fret or dwell. Carry on with your work. You can still achieve much more than you think. Many have done much more with much less.
After you step back from your frustrations over your slowing progress you will remember other adversities you have already faced and recount the other times you felt stuck or that you were at the end of your line. Those bridges you’ve crossed are no longer in the horizon. You haven’t met your end yet. Why not inch further to that red line to see if it will budge?
It is an uncomfortable place to be, but so is being stagnate. Regardless, the freedom afforded by choice is paramount. Pick the friction you will face.
Most of these directives sound awfully similar for a reason. Modern Stoicism is a simple philosophy. The practice is hard.
The Poetic
A World Out There, Unseen, but Always Present
Do not stick to only the books you know, the writers you adore, the stories that comfort you. There is more out there you haven’t dared to touch. Be open to all sources. My poetry is inspired equally by Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson, Metallica and Wikipedia searches of the occult, pseudosciences. I am inspired by traveling space and time, but also eating tacos with my dad.
Open yourself to the world, without judgement. Do not be the pretentious prick you feel like you need to be to write anything good. Being dismissive about other’s art helps no one. You do not need to be jaded about the words.
If only I had some one tell me this a decade ago.
Find whatever weird and tangential thread to a story out there that you can find. Pull it until the sweater is no more than thread on the floor. In fact, take the fabric metaphor further, write a poem about a loom (I did, its dope).