Daily Stoic Day 2: What Am I Learning And Studying For?

 Someone really smart once said that an unexamined life wasn't worth living. This is my feeble attempt to examine my life. I've made more than a few lifetimes worth of mistakes and I want to examine them. Not only for my own sake, but for anyone who might end up reading this in the future. Its also been said that if you can read about others mistakes and not make them then you're ahead of the game. Then this is also my attempt to get you, dear reader ahead of the game, because if something that I write can get you even a couple of steps ahead of the game then all my mistakes were not in vain.

So many people walk through this life without really thinking about it. Or examining it. What they do, why they do it. Where they are going. What their purpose is. I don't want to live that way. I want to know myself. I want to know who I am. I want to know why I was. I want to know why I did what I did. Why I thought what I thought. Why I felt how I felt. If I can pass on a few nuggets to my offspring or to someone who might stumble across my writing all the better. 

The study is simple, the education is how you dig. If you look at your soul as a hole then your education is the shovel. The more education you get the more passes you make with that shovel. The more earth you clear from that hole. The more of that hole you clear of earth the more of your soul you can see clearly. So take your education seriously. Take your studying seriously. Do not read just to "get the gist of it" read deeply. Try to feel what the author wants you to feel, and if you can't, try to feel what the author felt while writing it.

Do not leave your days unexamined. Think about your day. Think about what you did, said, thought and felt. Think about why you did, felt, thought and said those things. If you want to change those things, try to figure out how to do so. If you hurt someone along the way, did they deserve it? If they did deserve it, was it necessary? Did you hurt them for their own good or for yours? If you did something good, did you do it for its own sake, or did you do it for recognition? Find the actual why behind your actions.

Did you try to control things that were beyond your control? I'll bet you did. I know I did. Every day in almost every way I can find myself trying to control events and people who are beyond my control. Its easily my biggest problem. Not realizing at the time that what I am doing, saying, thinking or feeling is designed to attempt to control something that is outside of my full and complete control is without a doubt my numero uno short coming.

Make a concerted effort to read things that you know ahead of time you won't agree with, and read them with an open mind. An excessively open mind. A deliberately open mind. Do not confine yourself to an echo chamber, which is so very easy to do in this day and age. Politically, all you have to do to temper your opinion on matters is try to imagine any situation with the other side as the target or the beneficiary of the circumstances you are discussing and from that you should be able to deduce whether or not it is a fair situation.

Learning is a cradle to the grave pursuit and studying is a large part of that learning. It ends when you die. After that, if I have the means, I'll let you know...

Daily Stoic Day 1: What Things Are Truly In My Control?

 Truly in my control? Next to shit is truly in my control. If you really sit down and think about it. Next to nothing is actually in your control. You can't control your kids, you can't control your family, you can't control your house, you can't control your pets, you can't control much of anything except of course for yourself...and then there's a whole lot about yourself that you can't control.

Can you control the color of your skin? Nope, not really, I mean you can hit a tanning booth and control it to a point, or go all C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man on us, and control it that way, but you really can't control it. Can you control the color of your hair? Not without chemical intervention you can't. You can't control the color of your eyes. 

I can't control these god damned fruit flies that seem to keep getting in to my bathroom no matter what I do. You can't control what Donald Trump is gonna tweet next, and would you really want to? I mean, you'd ruin all the fun. You can't control what Joe Biden is going to say next, and who would want to stop that senile old bastard from talking, its too funny.

The fact of the matter is that you can't control much. The only things that you can control is what you do. What you say. What you think and how you feel. That's it. That's all you get to control. Doesn't matter who you are. I suppose if you work your way into some position of power you get to control some things. If you're an army general sure you can bark some orders and some troops will move around a board, but that doesn't mean that any of them have any real respect for you. Its simply a rank has its privileges thing. All you've really got is what you say, what you think, what you feel and what you do. That's as far as your control extends. After that, it ends. Rather abruptly.

Now I don't know how your typical army general would feel about that fact, but I kinda think its pretty liberating. Makes things a lot easier to sort out. If you can actually separate the two. The things you control from the things you don't. That's the tough part. I'm a boss at work. There's a lot of times I tell someone to do something and for whatever reason it doesn't get done when I want it done and I get my panties in a twist. Now, I told them to do it. Which I control. They didn't do it. Which much to my annoyance, I don't control. But I want to believe I do so I get pissy. Which is the exact wrong answer. I don't control what they do. I can't, unless I hold their hands through every minute of their day, which would defeat the purpose of having staff in the first place. I have to give up that control.

Can you control your spouse. Ask someone who's been cheated on. The answer is a resounding no. Hell no, even. Not a chance in holy hell can you control another person. Ask any parent of toddlers and/or teenagers. You don't control those lunatics, you can only hope to contain them. So what the hell do you do with this utter lack of control?

Love it. Relish it. Embrace it.

Its one of the greatest gifts you could ever be given. Its perfect freedom. The freedom to say, all I can do is what I can do and what happens after that is what it is and is beyond my control. Its the ability to honestly look at a situation and if you can say, I have done, said, thought and felt all I could do, say, think and feel, and what will be, will be and it will be what it will be.

What I can control I have. What I can't control can kiss my ass...is a beautiful way to look at life.