The Good Life - 05/27/2023 - Touring the farmhouse
I was up late last night to tour the outside of the farmhouse with Yumiko and her family. The experience was strange and tactile. Like lucid dreaming. Awake yet seemingly asleep. Yumiko and I huddled tight together on the sofa at midnight with our dogs, straining around the little screen on Yumiko’s phone, talking with our daughter and aunt Yoko as they walked outside the house showing us around. The place is exactly what we expected it would be, or rather exactly what Yumiko knew it would be, my dreamer’s mind painting falsity where truth does belong, a perennial issue of marriage to a man like me. To live here would require work. Not a lot. But some. But then, that’s what we’re after, a long-term project for our shared life after America.
During our tour we saw what’s left when a farming life is done. The shell and husk and outside of such a life. Everything personal being gone, the house and work-shed are empty. No belongings, no farm tools, no family altar or little gods in the eves. Living here would mean Yumiko and I must again build from scratch from the nothing we already do not posses. No issue there. As we are expert at beginning from zero—starting over being our preferred and ironic advantage at every stage of our shared life. And we could do that here. Start from scratch together at age sixty. The house faces south after all. An auspicious angle and degree. Good light for a garden or sitting mornings upon the stoop. A fine place and direction to start again.
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.