The Good Life - 06/13/2023 - Rats at the edge of a sea
Yumiko and I were both very tired after work yesterday… We walked the dogs together slowly along a meandering circuit through the angled neighborhood streets where we live, utterly exhausted, our smart black dog Ollie leading the way. Dinner, our show—which we couldn’t even finish—and then bed. I expect days like this will come more often as we continue to age, a creeping fatigue and frailty, a rising tide of sorts for those who no longer swim as well as we once did. It’s time to get out of this sea.
Years and years ago, I walked with my mentor David Bixler, the man to whom I dedicate my book Going Alone, beside the edge of a dry lakebed in the Mojave Desert. He was teaching myself and others about the various life zones spreading out like rings from the flat barren saline plain which was the lake bed itself, at that time utterly dry and flat and hard as a dried cake of dirty salt. Professor Bixler pointed out how the more salt-tolerant plants lived right up to the edge of the barren “lake”, while less tolerant plants grew in great concentric rings surrounding the lake further up and into hills and mountains beyond. He pointed out that many adapted animals also followed this same pattern, including a species of small rodent which lives in burrows right up to the lake’s edge. I thought for a bit, and then asked Professor Bixler, “What happens to those rodents at the lake’s edge during the periodic heavy rains that fill such dry lakes during flash flood? Do they leave their burrows and move to higher ground?” “Oh,” he said “No, they do not move. They simply stay in their burrows and drown.”
That’s how yesterday felt. That tough day of work for Yumiko and me, like a desert day when a great deluge came down from the sky, and I saw the collecting waters rising quickly towards our burrow at the edge of this vast, once dry sea. Not dangerously close—not yet—but close enough for a good scare. Yeah, I think it’s time for us to get out of this sea.
#GoingAlone #PrincipleOfReason
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.