The Good Life - 05/09/2023 - Setting course at sea
We’re moving our daughter out of her dormitory this weekend. Finals are done and another year of university is complete. Emily will stay with us until she goes to Tokyo in June. It will be good having her home again like in the past—though, there never really is another experience of the past.
Emily has such a big summer ahead. The type of youthful summer to shape dreams, make plans and set the course of her entire remaining life. Small changes now will yield utterly different life stories in the end. This is her summer to see whole worlds of potential evaporate and rise with the slightest adjustment of course. Two-degrees at the tiller now, worlds without end.
Emily’s experience this summer will be like a sea captain’s duty in the age of sail: the old man rising to deck with his instruments after days of cloud, to measure stars and sun and gain the ship’s position and bearing, ascertaining latitude and longitude and then deciding a new course before issuing commands of degree to the helmsman and of course and sail to the mate.
Summers of youth are a chance to decide which seas we will sail during our remaining seasons of life; such summers are a time to be blown about though gales, and to become becalmed in strange waters; to gaze at far away horizons and catch sight of new lands we might one day know. And then we must choose. And then off we go into life. Never again to return. Never again the same second chance again. Whole worlds passing away in the instant of choice. For though we can always go back to where we once were, there will never really be another summertime of youth to decide.
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
#Stoic #Stoicism #StoicPhilosophy
My name is Kurt Bell.
You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone.
Be safe... But not too safe.