It’s my final day of work before vacation. This day feels much more final than it seemingly is—like I’m saying goodbye to the teams at work and leaving everything in their quite capable hands. Yumiko and I will be back here before we know it. However, this trip feels different, as it’s not merely a holiday, but also a scouting mission for an utter and absolutely new life for us both. Our mission being to pick somewhere else to live in place of here—that’s maybe why this leaving feels more substantive than just a vacation, because if we succeed, we’ll return less connected to the USA than when we left, our bonds to this current place and life and all the people here loosened, our thoughts now more elsewhere and across the sea than here—we will begin to fade.
I’ve done that fade five times so far in my life, four of those times together with Yumiko. We’re ghosts in a way, appearing for some years in a place where we move and flicker among what is real before together beginning to fade and disappear one day for good. And even if we come back it’s for good, as no past life can be lived again once the bonds that tie are successfully severed: like driftwood repeatedly washed upon a beach—never situated or settled quite the same way with each successive tide, even when we are deposited again upon the same stretch of sand.
Next week Yumiko and I will wash together back onto the shore of Japan after almost a decade away, a temporary tumble under the guise of holiday in order to explore and consider places and options before we make our driftwood landfall again a few years hence. Another coming fade and goodbye to one life and the start of something utterly new. Drifting ghosts and phantoms across three and a half decades of quite deliberate and determined shared life. It’s time now for us to fade together again back into the sea.
The Good Life Meditation is my daily recitation and reminder of personal objectives and principles used in pursuit of a purposeful life in spite of a universe of seeming indifference. Learn more about The Good Life at my website GoingAlone.org or by reading my book Going Alone. And visit our Discord at: https://lnkd.in/gFgfGmY6
OBJECTIVES: 1. Be Always Ready to Die 2. Make Good Use of Time and Resources 3. Develop Good and Sound Life Principles 4. Cultivate Good Emotional Reactions 5. Perform Good Actions 6. Recognize True Limits and Opportunity 7. One Thing Slowly
PRINCIPLES: 1. Principle of War 2. Principle of Reason 3. Homunculus 4. Anchorhold 5. Home of Good and Evil 6. Principle of Purpose 7. Atomic Principle 8. Principle of Nature 9. The Pirate Ride 10. Principle of Maturity 11. Social Principle
12. Principle of Family 13. Public Speaking 14. Temperance 15. Life Will Not Go Well 16. The Horror Show 17. That Which Must Be Borne 18. The Feast of Offal 19. Distraction 20. Agency and The Great Indifference 21. The Best Seat in the House 22. The Restless Man 23. The Path of Wildness 24. The Great Life Adventure 25. The Risk of Avoiding Risk 26. Sin and Damnation 27. Complete Oblivion 28. The Season of Philosophy
29. Scriptwriting 30. Bullseye Aim 31. The Uphill Climb 32. Arena and Utility 33. Nothing IS enough 34. The Principle of Fun
My name is Kurt Bell.
You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone.
Be safe... But not too safe.