C'mon man.

 Like you’ve never cut in line, on purpose or on accident.

Like you’ve never done something selfish or spoken with an attitude.
Like you’ve never been jealous or petty or mean.

Of course you have. You’ve done all these things. We all have.

Yet when other people do them, it’s somehow different. It’s a transgression. A violation. That’s why we stew. We plot. We shower them with insults. Because when they do it, it’s intentional, it’s a sign of bad character, it must be stopped.

C’mon.

Remember when we butt up against someone else’s awfulness, to always remember when we ourselves have behaved like that. Marcus writes patiently about considering the motivations of the person responsible, of trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, of considering the crazy possibility that they aren’t irredeemable assholes. Who knows, they may even think they’re doing the right thing!

So whatever it is that’s pissing you off today, let it go. We are all plenty guilty of our own sins and stupidity. Which is why we need to forgive and forget other people’s. We need to give them the same clemency and patience we grant to ourselves (which is to say, basically, an unlimited amount). This is the essence of the Golden Rule. It’s easy to treat others the way you would like to be treated when everything is looking up. It’s when the chips are down that the Golden Rule is hardest to employ, which of course is when it is most important of all.

Live to the fullest

 By thinking, by imagining that we’ve just been given a few months to live, we can see immediately what we should stop doing. We realize we don’t have time to waste. And before you know it there is this urgent emergent need to do the things we love in place of the things we hate.

This is the positive side of the memento mori thought exercise: not “What would I stop doing?” but rather “What would I start doing?” How would I spend the limited time I had left? Where would I find meaning and purpose and joy?

The truth is that none of us know whether we will get to it later (of course, the tricky part is that we don’t know that we won’t either). So we must use this as a test. If you knew you were dying, what would you do more of? What would mortality prioritize for you?

Do more of it today. Because you are mortal. You are dying...fast or slow, nobody knows which.

Focusing on what we miss though, is that we also often miss the other things that we miss.

 Wish i was smart enough to think of all these postings I put up here, but to be honest, a lot of what I find is from various things I read.  I thought this was interesting.

It’s easy to complain when something goes wrong, it’s easy to notice what we’ve missed. Take the last two years, for example. So many of us have focused on what we’ve been deprived of. The people we haven’t been able to see. The places we haven’t been able to go. The opportunities lost.

The problem in focusing on what we miss, the Stoics say, is that it misses all the things we gain. Or could have gained had we decided to see the obstacle as the way, if we had seen the opportunities that each situation presented. The funny thing about focusing on what we miss though, is that we also often miss the other things that we miss. Which, if we fully understood the implications, would create an immense sense of gratitude.

As Cicero explains, “you may say that deaf men miss the pleasure of hearing a lyre-player’s songs. Yes, but they also miss the squeaking of a saw being sharpened, the noise a pig makes when its throat is being cut, the roaring thunder of the sea which prevents other people from sleeping.”

Seeing the light means you will also feel the darkness when the light is gone. That’s the deal. So instead of thinking about all the things you’ve lost during this pandemic, think of what you have gained instead. And once you’re done with that, also take a minute to think about all the painful things you missed too. There are upsides even to downsides. Deprivations, if considered properly, contain small mercies too.

Goes without saying

This should be the standard by which we judge all our endeavors, professions, relationships and indeed our lives themselves. Did we add value or extract it? Did we improve things or muddle them? Did we kick the can down the road on problems or did we solve them? Did we leave things in a better place than we found them?

We must leave things better than we found them. That’s our job.But what really matters is us. What kind of impact are we having on our industry? What kind of force are we in our neighborhood? Are we going to leave a broken, failing climate to our children? Are we going to run the economy hot for ourselves, knowing it will inevitably crash (and be some other generation’s problem?)

We must leave things better than we found them. That’s our job.

Live your dash.

 

What is the Dash?

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 Most tombstones have engraved in the stone a person’s birthday and the day they passed away. In between these dates is a dash. All  that was ever accomplished and experienced by that person is  represented by that dash. Every thought , every word, every emotion,  every act, every pain, every joy, every everything all occurred while  living in that dash.
 

It has been said that you can’t control when or where you were born : or for the most part when and where you will die. However, you can determine your life in between. The in- between is the dash. The dash is a journey, your life.  Live your dash.

read the obituaries!

Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards. Reading them is a way for me to think about death while also keeping it at arm’s length. Obituaries aren’t really about death; they’re about life...Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine. Thinking about death every morning makes me want to live.

What are you willing to give?

 And you? What are you willing to give? What are you serving? Who are you helping? If your life were a ransom, how many would it save?

Remember: acts of service don’t have to be grand or glamorous. It can be the decision to get a vaccine, to let your employees work from home. It can be a personal one, like the decision to adopt. Regardless, the obligation to service will always stare you in the face, and hold your gaze the more successful you become.

You are here for other people. Life is about what we can give to the many.