There are two ways to be rich.
The first and usual chosen path is to work hard, create value for your neighbor, and let them pay you for your craft, talents or your product. As you gain more and more certificates of achievement (in other words, money), you can use these chits to trade for things you need and want. Eventually, you hope, that bucket of needs and wants will fill adequately…then, you will be rich.
Air! Wonderful!
I suffer this justly: for I choose rather to become good tomorrow than to be good today. Marcus Aurelius
(Special thanks to coffee, which at the heart of the matter, is partially responsible for this post.)
Don’t just do something, sit there!
I mean really, really sit there. No thinking, no judging. No naming, categorizing. Just be. Feel the wind, but don’t say “that is the wind.” Don’t wonder if it is a sea breeze or a land breeze. Don’t measure…gail, breeze, 10 knots, 4 mph…just feel it.
Feel the warmth of the sun. No judging….it’s too hot. Hotter than yesterday (comparing). I wish it wasn’t so hot. I wish my son could be here with me in the sun. I wish I had spent more time outdoors with my wife. I wonder if my daughter gets outside. Don’t do that! Just–feel–the–sun.
Sense your breath. Don’t name it. Feel. Lungs filling with refreshing air. Expelling CO2. Refreshed. New Oxygen, refreshed. Wonderful breath. Two working lungs above the Earth’s surface. Someday those lungs will be nothing but carbon below the surface…good to know…now back to just breathing…so content.
CN Tower, Toronto
“Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or a kind Providence, or a confusion without a purpose and without a director. If then there is an invincible necessity, why dost thou resist? But if there is a Providence which allows itself to be propitiated, make thyself worthy of the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without governor, be content that in such a tempest thou hast in thyself a certain ruling intelligence. And even if the tempest carry thee away, let it carry away the poor flesh, the poor breath, everything else; for the intelligence at least it will not carry away.” Marcus’ Meditations Final Book.
So many of us want a sure bet, a final answer, a dead ringer for the truth. Continue reading
Well, duh (see title). I wish I had it all wired. As I read through Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations or Epictetus’ Enchiridion, there’s a tendency for me to think that these guys had it down; like they really had their shit together. Then, I wonder, had they really reached a destination? Were they Stoically enlightened? Did each claim to be Buddha? Were they actually sages? I prefer to think of them as thinkers, writing to help themselves wrestle life…kind of like me.
I write not because Continue reading