Living for Today

When life is easy, we tend to forget that tomorrow is not guaranteed to anyone.

We may live for another 50 years or for another 50 seconds.

Bad stuff happens. Car accident, heart attack, random act of violence. No one knows.

That doesn’t mean we should live recklessly. It just means we should savor the present moment.

No regrets is a coward’s motto. We all have regrets. It’s what we do with them that matters.

We have to stop worrying about past mistakes. We would all like to be perfect and not have done dumb shit in our life. That’s an impossibility.

Mistakes will be made. Some of them will be HUGE, life altering. Then what?

“You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot in front of the other, and God damn it, you refuse to let it get to you. You fight. You cry. You curse. Then you go about the business of living.” – Elizabeth Taylor

You may post your best self on social media. But what about the days you can barely get out of bed?

Guess what? No matter how good your life is, we all have bad days.

We should prepare ourselves for what may happen. Premeditatio Malorum. But not worry about what outcome may actually happen.

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality. “ – Seneca

We spend too much time worrying about a future that we are horrible at predicting.

Live in the present moment Because that is all we have.

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

It does not have to be a great day. It just has to be a day. Just get up and live it.

You don’t have to take the 30,000 foot view. My mom on once said to me during a difficult time get through the next 10 minutes, then the next 10 minutes.

Remember it is a privilege to be above the soil. There are more people than you can imagine who are breathing their last breath at this very moment.

Do not waste a moment that you still have breath.

If you have life be thankful. No matter your situation.

“Nature brings what is good for everyone and everything, and at the precise moment.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Life provides you with what you need if you are willing to accept it. It may look like an obstacle or bad luck, but that may disguise the opportunity.

Wisdom

Wisdom is a journey not a destination.

It comes from seeking knowledge not facts. It comes from developing skills

Wisdom comes from opening your mind to new ideas. Even ideas that seem contrary to your worldview.

Epicureanism is supposedly diametrically opposed to Stoicism. However Seneca quotes Epicurus repeatedly.

“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.” – Seneca

Wisdom is about seeking the truth. The truth is the truth.

Even if you disagree you should try to understand what they have to say.

You don’t have to agree with everything but maybe something they say makes you expand your perspective.

Isn’t that what wisdom is truly about?

“Don’t get into this binary thing where you’re looking at Fox or CNN. Read the other side. Some of your fellow citizens have good reasons to believe something different than you do. I try to think sometimes about where are they right? Not are they wrong. You’ll become a better thinker. And you earn peoples’ respect.” – Jaime Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase

Life is about the search for the truth.

“It is the search for the truth, not possession of the truth which is the way of philosophy. Its questions are more relevant than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.” – Karl Jaspers

If we want to seek true wisdom we need to lead with questions and not answers.

Answers are an endpoint. Questions are a beginning. Questions lead to more questions.

Questions lead you on the journey.

Courage

Oxford Languages dictionary defines courage as the ability to do something that frightens one and strength in the face of pain or grief.

The Stoics would define courage as living your life virtuously by holding on to your principles no matter what you are facing.

“A setback has often cleared the way for greater prosperity. Many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted heights.” – Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

We have faced many challenges in education recently. A pandemic, civil unrest, a charged political climate. All have come to our doorstep.

Each one of these has challenged what we do and how we do it.

The one thing that should never change is why we do it. The students.

What we do and how we do it can and should change as new and better ideas come along.

Why we do it that’s where the courage comes along.

We are constantly challenged by outside forces to question why we got into education.

Angry parents, unruly students, unfunded mandates, the list is endless.

We have to have the courage to filter out the noise and focus on what we can control.

We can control showing up every day and giving everything we have for our students.

We can control having the courage to make the right choices for students even when they are hard and unpopular.

“Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt

Our students must be more important than our fear.

Do we have the courage to give every student what they need to be successful?

Do we have the courage to take the challenges we have faced and “rise to more exalted heights?”

If we want a better world than we have today, we have to.

Premeditatio Malorum

Premeditatio Malorum means the premeditation of the evils and troubles that might lie ahead.

Now that may seem contrary to Seneca’s idea that “we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

Premeditatio Malorum is about being prepared, not worrying.

“Today it is you who threaten me with these terrors; but I have always threatened myself with them, and have prepared myself as a man to meet man’s destiny. If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes.” – Seneca

I have no issue sitting down and thinking about what might happen and preparing. It’s the letting it go, knowing I have a plan in place, that’s the part I struggle with.

I perseverate on what on the worst case scenario, and I become anxious about it.

That is the running narrative in my head.

I need to learn to focus on the plan and not the troubles themselves.

That is how you balance Seneca’s two ideas.

Think about what bad could happen and plan for it. Don’t make the evils and troubles worse than they might be in your imagination.

Know that you can handle anything that is thrown at you. Because you are ready.

“You can read Seneca a hundred times and think you’re now prepared for calamity, but that’s just knowledge disguised as understanding.” – Lawrence Yeo, More to That blog

It doesn’t matter what you know if you can’t put it into action when you need to.

Think of what might happen, prepare for it, don’t imagine that it will be worse than it could be, and let it go.

Anxiety

Anxiety is fear of the future.

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca

Nine times out of ten what you fear most never comes to fruition.

Yet your brain in the moment just can’t come to that conclusion. The more you try not to think about it the more anxiety you feel.

So how do you overcome anxiety?

Be present. Focus on what you are doing in that moment.

Let this moment push the fear aside.

If and when you get to the moment you fear then you can be present and deal with it.

However most of the time the moment that you fear never comes or isn’t as bad as you imagined.

And you have wasted all of that time worrying about something that never actually happens.

Be present. Life will come as it comes. You can only control your reaction to what happens.

The Colosseum

Social media can be like a blood sport. Survival of the fittest. One person attacking another. With hundreds, thousands, millions looking on.

People saying things to each other that they would never say in person. And the onlookers egg them on or respond in kind. Each follower giving the proverbial thumbs up or thumbs down to express their opinion.

“Let our aim be a way of life not diametrically poised to, but better than the mob” – Seneca, Letter V, Letters from a Stoic.

Why has it become OK to do something on social media to hurt another human being just to appeal to the mob? Aren’t we better than the mob that watched the games at the Colosseum? Where has our civility gone? As I discussed in an earlier post where is civil discourse?

Social media has become an echo chamber where people find others who believe what they believe. When you only listen to those on your side you don’t learn anything new. Everyone should actively seek out those you disagree with. That’s when you learn something new.

If used differently social media can open your eyes to a whole, new world. While it may be entertaining to follow people who disparage others, the entertainment value is fleeting. While it may feel good to only follow those people who share your views, how will you ever challenge your own thinking? It is better to follow people who can teach you something.

“[R]efrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention, not their own improvement, by doing certain things which are calculated to give rise to comment on your appearance or way of living generally.” – Seneca, Letter V, Letters from a Stoic.

Social media has brought a world of learning to your fingertips. You can learn anything from anyone. But to do so you have to be purposeful. You can’t just mindlessly scroll through your timeline. You have to actively search for individuals who challenge your worldview, those who open you up to new ideas.

Be judicious in who you follow. If someone is going to get followers at others expense than are they worthy of your time?