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On the other hand, when do you go for the gusto?

Edit: the universe solved the problem for me. Also I realized it wasn’t mine to have, and never was. I just thought it was mine to have.

I know I keep saying “All the good things in life happened because I met a stranger.” Marriage, new friends, new books, new ideas. All of that and more.

There is a corollary.

All the good stuff hasn’t happened yet. The good stuff will happen because I do something new, something that I hadn’t done before. (Well, yes, the good stuff could also happen because I do the same thing for the 1,542nd time, at which point the payoff occurs.)

The principle is to keep an open mind and don’t be a scared or lazy son of a bitch. Open mind because you can’t know the payoff until you have the experience. You can’t know the joy of talking to a new person until you talk.

Prejudging and saying “I won’t do this because it is a waste of time” creates a known payoff: stasis. Maybe you’re right. Equally possible? You’re wrong.

“Yeah, maybe. What the hell. Let’s give it a shot.”

Do lots of that.

If you wish to make progress, lay aside your alibis.

Sam Torode’s “The Manual“ (Enchiridion), Chapter 12

Epictetus is talking about lying to yourself.

Let’s say your car breaks down. You say “it happened because the car is yellow.” Or, “it’s running just fine” when quite evidently there may be a lurking issue. How will you properly respond to the event? Or learn from it?

Today’s skirmish was a victory.

After a good-sized lunch I successfully resisted the frozen yogurt/ice cream/other sweet item temptation and walked.

And walked and walked. I will hit 10,000 steps again today.

My brain was noisy. I kept walking.

What did I learn? I learned about things within my control (a seemingly irresistible urge for something sugary and the purchase/consumption of same).

And I exercised control over my thoughts and actions.

Meanwhile, the thing that is outside my control (how and when my body sheds that roll of fat around my waist) did not haunt me.

Every tiny victory builds strength. Get momentum and keep it.

Start from the assumption that you’re probably wrong.

It doesn’t matter why you’re probably wrong. Lack of information is an ego-stroking reason: I’m smart, sophisticated, and as soon as I get more data I will be able to nail this decision. (This is also probably the worst place to be, because your arrogance will not let you understand that you will always have insufficient data to make a bulletproof decision).

That you’re several pistons short of a functioning engine is a bit harder to accept. Actually this is pretty good. If you’re dumb and you know it, you will make good, careful choices within your self-admitted constraints.

That you lack training is the arrogance of the midwit, the A student. Just as you can never have sufficient data, you can never have sufficient education. In fact, the education is likely to blind you to ideas or information or both.

Smart, well-educated. That’s a perilous place to be when you’re trying to decide what’s real and what to do.

Or, to be more precise: believing you are smart and well-educated, and allowing those beliefs to blind you? That is the danger zone.

It’s better to understand that you are dumb. Not in all situations. For some things you are dumber, and for others you are smarter.

It’s better to understand that you are ignorant and illiterate in some areas, and informed and educated in others.

Intelligence, education, and information are not transitive. Being well-educated in particle physics doesn’t make you an excellent salesman. Knowing all about Shakespeare doesn’t make you an expert on tort law.

The takeaway: know yourself. Know that in every field of human endeavor you are likely to be stupid, lack sufficient training, and misinformed.

That’s a good starting point for making a decision.

Do not take satisfaction in possessions and achievements that are not your own. If a horse were to say, “I am handsome,” his pride may be excusable. But if you boast, “I have a handsome horse,” you are claiming merit that is not yours.

What, then, is your own? The way you live your life. When you are living in harmony with nature, you can take just satisfaction.

The Manual (Enchiridion), Epictetus, the Sam Torode rewrite, Chapter 6

Just remember that you are not your horse. Judge your own actions. Your own thoughts. Those are the only things within your control.

Everything else? Outside of your control and if you take credit for it you’re lying to yourself and others.

And ultimately it’s the lying to self that is the most harmful.

The whole point of Reality Laughs is that my thinking and my opinions can be wildly different from what really exists.

This assumes that there is a reality outside of me, and I think that’s a safe assumption. To say the least. 🙃

If my opinion is wildly wrong, I feel the pain when I bump up against it. “I can walk through walls!” is an exercise in positive mental attitude until I put that assertion to the test.

The bump against the wall is real. The pain is real. What does that pain do to my thinking? Do I abandon my belief in my wall-walking abilities? Better yet, do I examine the thinking processes that brought me to believe I could walk through walls?

Or do I double down? Do I find other walls to test? Bump bump bump bump. How many times do I test until I re-examine my belief? Until I question the thinking that generated that belief?

This is why it’s so important for me to not lie to myself. Because the lies I tell myself are within my control. The outside world? Not in my control.

If I present myself to the world looking like a football, the world will kick me. Not because of any Divine Agency in the world/nature/God but because of me. The wall doesn’t jump out at me when I attempt to walk through it. It’s me, my actions, driven by my beliefs, what did it.

This is from the Sam Torode translation (which he titles The Manual) of Enchiridion by Epictetus:

People who are ignorant of philosophy blame others for their own misfortunes. Those who are beginning to learn philosophy blame themselves. Those who have mastered philosophy blame no one.

The Manual, Chapter 5

This is a barometer, not a static measurement like my height. It’s not a destination to be arrived at.

At any given time I can flicker between the three states.

I notice that when I stay away from social media and politics I don’t fall to the “blame others” level. I’m using a blocker software (freedom.to) and apparently that is necessary for my well-being. I’m not strong enough to stay away from hell by myself.

Mostly I’m in the middle, blaming myself for everything. That’s my default mode, I guess from a lifetime of rugged individualism and taking extreme responsibility for self.

I’m in the middle a lot of times for reasons that Epictetus would say are outside of my control. Other times it’s my standard attitude toward life which, of course, is optional.

At my best, I float unperturbed.

I’ve just experienced a one-hour event in my life where I started low (blaming someone else for an event that may or may not be financially painful—I don’t know yet), to blaming myself (I didn’t give adequate instructions), to equanimity (let’s see what happens and deal with it).

And this is with a close family member. Only once in the beginning was I a bit short and snarly. Thereafter I was helpful and supportive, I hope.

In fairness, I was up from 2 am to 5 am (living firmly in the “blame others” zone which is why I couldn’t sleep), only to be awakened after finally falling asleep by a phone call. 😀

I watched the progression through the stages and here I am, writing about it and I’m OK right now, even if it costs me money. (Car problems. What are you going to do?)

This, then, is my primary focusing tool for now: examine everything with Epictetus eyes. If it’s under my control, do the best I can to be honorable and take the indicated action. If it’s outside of my control, choose a neutral attitude, then choose actions as appropriate.

I do not expect to master philosophy, by the way. I would be satisfied with occasional, sustained moments of inner peace. I do not want to inflict pain on others (by being in the “blame others” mode) or on myself (by reflexively blaming myself).

Postscript: See how I threw an excuse in there? This immediately triggered the old saying in my head: “There are no explanations, only excuses.” I just gave myself an excuse for why it was ok for me to be in hell, mentally. And the excuse extends to being less than kind to my family member.

It’s not ok, whatever the cause, to be in hell. It’s not where I want to be. It’s not ok to use an external event (my excuse of lack of sleep) as a justification for why I can be an asshole.

I am leaving the excuse (lack of sleep) here in this entry to remind me that there are no excuses. Either I’m on the beam or I’m not. Either my oxen have fallen into the ditch or they have not.

If the oxen are in the ditch, who cares how they got there. My first job is to get them out of the ditch. Meaning that if my mentality is wrong, my first job is to get my mentality right.

That (getting my mental oxen out of the ditch) is something within my control. The fact that I slept poorly? Not within my current control, though presumably I might have been able to change my middle-of-the-night the-world-is-going-to-hell thinking then and gained a few hours of rest.

At least, after a day or so of Twitter, I am back on the full-time blocking of my favorite toxic websites with freedom.to.

I turned off site privacy again, mostly inspired by DT. Just blog, goddamnit.

Am I blogging or is this a personal journal? Yes.

Stop writing shit for page views. Stop it.

You’re wasting everyone’s time, especially your own.

https://twitter.com/Delicious_Tacos/status/1319295826347257857?s=20

Edit (later, when viewing this again): This is so much deeper than it appears. This is a Guiding Principle and deserves those initial caps.

Meaning? Don’t do anything for external applause, external effect. The life you harm most is your own.