Reality Laughs

That which leads to a general agreement, and likewise to a perfect one, is an assured belief in certain facts; but if, lacking this assurance, all things are adrift in our minds, then doctrines are indispensable; for they give to our minds the means of unswerving decision.

Seneca, Letter __:62.

From this I deduce the following guideline: it’s easy to know what to do when the facts are clear. When the facts are unclear (e.g., when contemplating what happens tomorrow or the next day), you need “doctrines”, or deep guiding principles.

Yesterday’s facts are relatively clear. I’m not being clever there. Yesterday is a matter of memory only, therefore malleable depending on your mood and other facts. Yesterday can be altered. You can change the past, and in fact I would guess that history changes all the time.

Spiritual principles are needed when considering the past, too. But that’s not what caught my eye today.

The question of “what do I do now?” is what matters. How do I act, right now? And because facts are barely known about the now (how much can I really know?) and no factual knowledge is possible about the future, the only answer is deep spiritual principles.

So if you really look at it, reliance on facts is probably misplaced: we reinterpret the past to suit ourselves, the now is inherently only partially perceived, and the future is wholly unknown.

That’s why a kit of three or four or possibly five ideas, constantly in mind, can guide me to better choices. This is analogous to the Jocko “four laws of combat” method of operation.

Seneca, in this letter, seems to be overly complex but maybe that’s because he is making a collateral argument (precepts, doctrines, etc.).

I don’t know explicitly what my personal equivalent is for the four laws of combat.

Keep it simple is a start. Let’s explicitly adopt that as the first guiding principle of my life, shall we? (I am addressing the busload of little “me” brains that constantly talk to me haha. I am a committee of legion and they are an unruly and contrarian bunch.)

These two qualities, the one of recklessness and the other of sloth, cannot be respectively checked or roused unless we remove their causes, which are mistaken admiration and mistaken fear.

Seneca, Letter __:37.

Mistaken admiration: I see something, want it, but do not see the whole picture. Maybe I don’t see the whole picture because I don’t want to see the whole picture. Maybe I am currently incapable of seeing the whole picture. Maybe it just takes a while for the whole picture to appear, just like developing film for an old-style camera.

No matter. Moving too fast means I encounter reality, not just the tantalizing appearance that attracted my attention. Haste.

Mistaken fear is the inverse of this. I see an incomplete picture and rather than focus on what I see, I imagine what I don’t see. Inaction. Sloth.

How do I avoid haste and sloth?

Not by making considered judgments at every step, though that is essential. No, avoid these by having an inner compass that dictates decisions and actions. Then I will be less apt to be pulled off course by the shiny.

In a word, Seneca would say “virtue”. Build an appreciation for virtue first. Unfortunately, that is so vague a concept as to be useless to me at the moment.

I’m here.

Dominant attitude for the last several days: sad, numb, despair. Stuck.

Correlating facts: big projects long overdue, cash flow bad. Stopped the daily running because of a sinus infection, so lack of hardcore exercise. No daily reading (or skimpy efforts) and no writing here. Email inbox deep in unprocessed messages.

I’ve started daily practice of cycles (5 or 6) daily to get stuff done. It helps. I’m getting momentum at work.

I need a teacher, in the philosophical sense. We all go up and down emotionally. We can’t remain on the peaks at all times. Encouragement and exhortation from a trusted, insightful companion goes a long way to help us traverse the ravines.

I need practices and procedures in my life that are designed to survive the worst times. Don’t optimize for moments of peak performance. Build floors through which you cannot fall. It’s analogous to the “don’t be stupid” advice given to the question of how to succeed. Simply win by not making dumb moves, not by being exceedingly brilliant.

Acknowledge that my brain is a fart in a windstorm. I don’t keep on the beam for years at a time. Instead, accept this.

Ride the swells of interest and attention, and when they wane, grab the next swell, propelling me ever forward to the shore.

Which means of course that I need to keep in mind my Quest. Whatever that is.

Living a good life is a matter of doing simple things.

1. Avoid stupid, obvious errors. Lottery tickets won’t make you a millionaire.
2. Do the obvious, right things. Get enough sleep every night, eat healthy food, etc.
3. Don’t stop.

That should work. Our fickle Goddess, Fortune, may have a gift for you, but for the things within your control those three rules are sufficient.

If you strive to avoid stupidity, you will develop a sense of how to spot it. You will correct your course of action when you inevitably fall for something. (We all do). In other words, all other principles for living will come from this.

If you strive to do the obvious, right things, you will develop a thirst for knowing what is right. This thirst will keep you pointed in the right direction. And a focus on the obvious will help you stick with impactful, obvious actions and help you avoid spending time and effort on inconsequential matters.

If you keep going, success is inevitable. That is true no matter what Fortune delivers.

This way of life gives Fortune fewer opportunities to give you hand grenades and more opportunities to give you cupcakes.

It’s pretty easy to follow this path, at least for me. Decisions are based on a handful of emotional responses I watch for.

I do stupid stuff or have stupid ideas? The emotions are evident. Laziness or haste indicate an unwillingness to consider the big picture, thereby missing an obvious flaw in my reasoning. A feeling that I’m so clever indicates a possibility that my thinking is flawed. Yes, I’m smart enough and skilled enough to outwit a casino’s odds at the dice table. Watch for these.

Do the obvious right thing? Look for and appreciate the boring, the cliché, the slow. Save money from every paycheck? Boring. Make your bed? Cut Cheetos and Diet Coke out of your diet? Well of course but . . . .

How do you plot the general direction for life? Your compass must point somewhere. How do you choose which way to go?

I remember as a teenager/college kid vowing I would never be like my parents. They had a station wagon and lived in a suburban house. Years later, I had a blinding flash of the obvious: I was married, lived in a suburban house, and had a minivan. And life was good. Very good.

The path blazed by millions of others over hundreds of generations just might be a good path to follow. Don’t worry. There is an infinite universe of fantastic possibilities within even the most prosaic endeavor. You won’t be bored.

Afterthought. Let’s bring this back to personal impact. This is not some self-help book I’m writing here. It’s an exploration with an audience of one: me, the author.

Do the obvious today. There is a job that needs to be finished. It’s bedeviling me. It’s hard, boring work to get it done and shipped. Let’s ship it today. Obvious: do the boring. Sit with a piece of paper and a pen and edit by hand until finished.

The Jocko video.

It applies daily to my life. Bumps happen in life, big and small.

Accept.

Take a breath.

“Good.”

Take action. Go on the attack, if you will. Don’t be passive. Move forward.

Stop looking at life as an achievement exercise.

There is no goal. No achievement. No “we’re done”. no finish line

Life never done. It’s present or absent. And until life is absent, it’s Go Time.

Go.

And as you go, flow. Every bump in the road is normal. Every event is an opportunity to absorb and adapt. Soon enough (sometimes minutes!) you won’t care about the bump and will be on to the next thing. That’s good!

How did I miss this piece from Epictetus? Bob used to say that the present is primetime. Now is when your actions happen, and now is when results happen.

51.1. How much longer will you delay before you think yourself worthy of what is best, and transgress in nothing the distinctions that reason imposes? You’ve acquired knowledge of the philosophical principles that you ought to accept, and have accepted them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for, that you should delay any effort to reform yourself until he appears? You’re no longer a youth; you’re a full-grown man. If you’re now negligent and idle, and are constantly making one delay after another, and setting one day and then another as the date after which you’ll devote proper attention to yourself, then you’ll fail to appreciate that you’re making no progress, but will continue to be a layman your whole life through until you die.

2. So you should think fit from this moment to live as an adult and as one who is making progress; and let everything that seems best to you be an inviolable law for you. And if you come up against anything that requires an effort, or is pleasant, or is glorious or inglorious, remember that this is the time of the contest, that the Olympic Games have now arrived, and that there is no possibility of further delay, and that it depends on a single day and single action whether progress is to be lost or secured.

3. It was in this way that Socrates became the man he was, by attending to nothing other than reason in everything that he had to deal with. And even if you’re not yet a Socrates, you ought to live like someone who does in fact wish to be a Socrates.

Handbook, 51. Emphasis added.

If you put this with the little piece I read from Marcus Aurelius today, it all makes sense. Slow down. Do one thing. So the vital thing.

“ If you seek tranquillity, do less.” Or (more accurately) do what’s essential—what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”

But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.

Meditations, x:24

The condition and character of a layman is this: that he never expects that benefit or harm will come to him from himself, but only from externals. The condition and character of a philosopher is this: that he expects all benefit and harm to come to him from himself.

Handbook, 48.1

Reminder to self, from Epictetus:

Sheep do not spit out grass to show the farmer how much they’ve eaten—they ruminate on it, digest it, then display the results in wool and milk. In the same way, do not spew your undigested thoughts; show their results in action.

The Manual: A Philosophers Guide to Life, by Sam Torode, ch. 46

That’s an accessible rewrite of The Enchiridion that I found. Sometimes it’s good to read the same stuff from a different person’s view.

For contrast, here is the other translation I have on my phone:

For sheep, too, don’t vomit up their fodder to show the shepherds how much they’ve eaten, but digest their food inside them, and produce wool and milk on the outside. And so you likewise shouldn’t show off your principles to laymen, but rather show them the actions that result from those principles when they’ve been properly digested.

Handbook, 46.1

Anyway, that gave my ego a little jab today when I read it. I am too eager to show everyone how fabulous I am in some way or another, seeking praise.

Shut the fuck up. Do what you’re supposed to do. Listen intently. Own your own life, and remember that the praise of others means nothing in the long run. And the short run, too, for that matter.

I had an experience yesterday, just one of those quiet moments when insights rush in and a gong goes off in your head. After running an errand I parked a little bit up the street because the neighbors on the east side of our house were having a birthday party for their young son.

As I was walking down the sidewalk to the house, there was a small car with a young couple in it, parked at the curb in front of the neighbor’s house on the west side of our house. It has a for sale sign up, and the two in the car were looking at the house, talking, and writing things down.

Flashback. Twenty-five years ago, that couple was us: driving around in a shitty little Honda Civic, renters dreaming of owning a house, not knowing how we were going to do it.

The moment was blindingly poignant because we were that couple, looking at that very house 25 years ago, and we bought it. Our first house. It all started in that little house.

Kids. Life. Everything.

A quarter-century on this block.

What does that have to do with Epictetus? Nothing, I suppose, except that in fact we quietly kept our heads down and have done The Work. The work of inner development. The work of parenting to the best of our ability.

As much as I rag on myself for being a loser (when will this inner dialog stop?) we have grown to solid and reliable human beings. Epictetus might recognize some progress.

As long as I’m on The Path I am content. I’m where I should be.

Just a reminder, though: no bragging about how spiritually (!) or intellectually (!) evolved you are. You as far from the horizon today as you were last year or last century. No bragging about your running. (That’s the trivial and obvious way in which I see the ego popping up).

Just, as they say, shut up and . . .

Get after it.

Get some.

Don’t use your time and energy to self-motivate in order to do what needs to be done. Just do it. The doing will create its own motivation.

And shitcan the braggy stuff.

After 17 days of 10k runs in a row I stopped. Or was stopped, I should say, by a sinus infection.

Who knows whether there is causation, but there definitely is correlation.

I feel better now after four days of very early bedtimes and lots of sleep, and will run starting tomorrow.

The running frankly gave me bragging rights that I took advantage of. That’s not good. That’s ego.

The 10k daily routine is something that I wouldn’t mind staying at. But now it’s time to be a bit more sane. Other people are deliberate about their exercise routines. I should be, too.

Rather than look at this as a failure I see this as finding a productive fault line. Time to adjust.

One other interesting correlation: a foul mood. I stopped reading in the morning, stopped writing my thoughts here, and was generally pissy. I can’t wait to get moving again tomorrow.