The Good Life - 07/28/2023 - Siberia at 116
It was 116 degrees at Siberia ghost town yesterday. A few years back, and I’d have felt a longing to be out there. No more... I don’t want to go. Thinking of that place now is like remembering the table at a restaurant where we’ve just departed; a good meal, a satisfying experience, but there’s no desire to return to sit among the dirty dishes and the ruins of our finished meal. There’s no looking back. And so it’s been with every chapter of my life with Yumiko, no looking back and no longing for what once was. That said, returning to America ten years ago, and now, our soon return to Japan, these do feel a little like going back—but they are not. This is not going back. We’ve simply changed too much to ever really go back. Japan is only suitable now because Yumiko, Emily and I have become new people after a decade away. America changed us. And now we’re ready again for a new and different life in Japan. We’re ready now to return.
Maybe someday I’ll be ready again to return to Siberia ghost town during mid-summer? Maybe when I’m seventy-years old, ten years from now—if I make it that far—I’ll come back to visit the United States and then drive alone out there to Siberia in August, in order to sit in my car with one window rolled down and the deadly heat pouring in. And I’ll look out and over the railroad tracks to the north, to the low Bristol Mountains out there where the Indifference haunts, and I’ll remember the decade of my fifties, my last strong decade, and the time when I did so often go alone to the desert to search, and how I eventually found, and then I came back, I came home, I FOUND home,—and then I no longer needed anything more out there to find.
#GoingAlone #PrincipleOfPurpose
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.