The Good Life - 08/20/2023 - Alpine heights
I simply adore becoming old. Every decade of my life has been an improvement on the decade before. Life really is like climbing a mountain, with the view improving with every hard year of striving. This fact I knew. I understood this point in my thirties, forties and fifties, which motivated me then to climb hard and to rarely rest. What I didn’t know was that with age—with altitude, really—the noise and clammer of the younger years may get slowly left behind, like a raucous city park concert growing dim while we move further out of town. I can still hear the noise, down there and far behind. But it’s growing fainter every day as I continue this more peaceful upward climb.
There’s quiet up here on the mountain of life, up above the elevations of our striving school years, and our earnest career years, and our dedicated parenthood years and all the rest. It seems we’ve reached the alpine slopes beyond all that. A place of sweet air, small gurgling streams and tiny mountain flowers among the rocks. There are great summits nearby and the highest peaks stand clear and looming just above, like giants surrounding Beanstalk Jack. And there’s the darkest and coldest heaven now just overhead, like black outer space beyond our fingertip reach. And turning from the mountain to look back where we’ve come, oh my! What a view! Did we really travel in life so far! Are there really so many places and days left behind? A vast landscape of memory from this high mountainside to that far distant sea where we started six decades back. Maybe I’ll sit a while and have a look, take in the vista and relish this newfound peace? Yeah, O.K., but just for a bit. For soon we must turn and resume our climb. As climbing is simply what we do. And though we know there is no summit in life, and we all must die along the way, we’ll nevertheless keep striving up for as long as we can, moving and climbing higher through the peace, and the satisfaction, of becoming old.
#GoingAlone #GreatLifeAdventure
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.