Month: December 2020

Remember that.

There is enough. I have enough. I am enough.

A new view, for me:

All the same, if you ask me what the human good is, I can offer you no other reply than to say that it lies in a certain quality of choice.

Epictetus, Handbook 1.9(18).

That’s dense. How you choose = the essence of goodness?

I’m dropping this quote here because I want to return to it and uncover meaning that is currently inaccessible to me.

Yesterday was a driving day. Today is stationery. Things to do for work: BAU as well as turning the ship to a new destination.

Maybe a bit of shopping, too. There is that shop 7 miles away that I went to yesterday. They had my stuff in inventory. Go back again today and stock up?

And conversation.

Slow down.

There is always an other side. I forget this. The internet taught me the lesson again. Because of our recent visitors I watched a bunch of things on YouTube about van life etc. Let me tell you, it’s all glamour.

But then, a search for the equivalent of one star reviews. A search with “hate van life” or variants turns up the day to day reality. Not bad stuff, just reality.

Reality is as you would expect. Where do I poop if I don’t have a facility in my van? Keeping things clean. Stuff breaks. All the normal day that happens to everyone all the time. Friction. The sheer drudgery of life is not eliminated even when you look like you are living a highlight reel.

The interesting perspectives were the psychological ones. Some talked about the lack of rootedness. Yes you make friends but it’s not the same. I experienced that in NZ. A couple talked about the way that having a YouTube channel became the most important factor organizing their lives.

They suddenly are not free despite presenting us with a view of a lifestyle of freedom. The need to pump out content for the channel affects what they do, when they do it, etc.

Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that I watched the videos and wanted to live the carefully curated dream.

No. Life is the whole package. There is another side to the coin. Always. Take the coin. But don’t pretend you can take pieces of the coin. It doesn’t work that way.

In fact, an afterthought. Maybe go after life taking the friction part, the so-called bad stuff. If you accept that as part of the normal, the expected, then the highlight reel will be that much better.

Bad example but it’s the only one I can think of right now: getting married and having kids. That’s a package sold with a highlight reel. And yet the sheer slog of decades of marriage and raising kids to adulthood is missed by those of us who buy the package, despite being visible. I only dimly perceived it, and jumped into the game willingly but semi-blindly.

My experience is that the payoff of marriage and fatherhood has been beyond the advertised benefits in the highlight reel.

Maybe the YouTube folks are getting that, too. Maybe (for some of them) there is a payoff that can only be earned by going through the slog.

Anyway. Other side of the coin. Take the whole package. Don’t be dazzled by the benefits, and don’t be fearful of the friction. The payoff is in experiencing both.

So accordingly, whenever we’re impeded, disturbed, or distressed, we should never blame anyone else, but only ourselves, that is to say, our judgements.

Epictetus, Handbook, 5.

My normal process is to be distressed or impeded because something didn’t work right. Out of my control and I am unhappy about it.

Unhappiness? Why? There must be a reason. I then find fault with my actions. Usually that means “You didn’t work hard enough.”

That doubles the unhappiness.

The Stoics tell me that the unhappiness is within my control. The external events about which I am unhappy, not in my control. Traffic is heavy and I go slower than I desire? That’s an “out of my control” problem.

The unhappiness about my actions? That’s something to look at. Am I really unhappy about my actions? Or the outcomes of the actions? Or am I just unhappy about anything I do, as a general operating principle?

Offhand comment on the Foresty Forest YouTube channel when he is in the Yukon. Talking about the prospectors, that’s what he said.

That hit me on multiple levels.

The first is the obvious. What restrictions were imposed on them by governed the? Far, far fewer than now. You were in Australia and you wanted to make your fortune in the Yukon? You went.

The second is its inverse. What freedom do I have now because of current levels of government? I am free in ways they are not because some base-level survival problems are taken off the table.

The third meaning is the important one. Words are slippery. “Free” has an individual meaning to me that it does not have to, for instance, my children.

Freedom from. Freedom to. Freedom in my head.

Keep saying that.

No.

Keep saying that, too.

Agitated already. Work to do. Let’s do what needs to be done while withholding judgment about life and the morning and state of mind and everything else that makes the day seem overwhelming.

I’m going to try an experiment. Until the end of January, I’m going to listen to classical music. I don’t care what (except violin solo works which for some reason annoy me).

I’m listening to downtempo instrumental lounge electronica whatever right now. It’s mostly minor key. I don’t like classical music as a rule, but let’s cleanse the mental palate.

I’m doing this as a test to see if different music means a different dominant mentality.

I do know that ditching the other music I like has been helpful. That’s the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Stevenson Branch Davidians, etc. etc. genre. That takes me somewhere is rather not go.

These little entries are self-exhortations. I am my own cheering section, watching myself run the marathon of life. Keep going! You’re doing it! Yay!

It works.

Self-talk. Cheering squad. Exhortation. It’s all the same.