Part 1: The Setup
It is a Saturday morning
right now and I realize just how un-Stoic I am. I rage too much at
the world. I'm not a very social creature. I'm an emotional eater. I
don't work the mind too hard, nor the body. In short, I'm much like a
lot of people these days, if you believe what you hear about
Americans.
And this cycle of un-Stoic
behavior just feeds into more un-Stoic living. No, scratch that: the
way I am now is un-philosophical, period. I'm just un-ing all over
the place.
This morning, as I woke up,
it stuck me that I need to get life back down the path of following
Stoic Nature. And because I've been reading a lot of experimental
journalism – the act of living a certain way for however long
because people like reading about other people doing things – I've
decided I needed a yearlong Stoic reset.
Stoic reset? What's that
even mean?
What
I mean is I'm going to spend some time rereading some of the more
accessible Stoic works, try to break them down into bite-size action
items (maxims, for a more philosophical bent or rules for a more
practical one), then do my best for a year to live by these items.
If
you've read The Happiness
Project,
then this might sound familiar. Gretchen Rubin, in her quest to find
more happiness in her life, read philosophy, studies, and novels to
find action items of happiness. Then, she pulled a Ben Franklin: she
made a chart of these items and marked which one's she did. She
started out with a few items per month, then added more until she
December, which was her ultimate test of happiness, living every day
by her items.
From
what I remember reading, it worked as well as it could. She didn't
become perfectly happy, but happier. And so it is for my goals. I'm
not looking to be a sage, but sageier.
Shut up, I know that's not a word.
Of
course, as it was with philosophers of old, so it will be for me: I'm
going to steal – er – be
inspired by
other people's ideas as well. For example, Gretchen has a wonderful
chapter about having more energy. Her reasoning is also on point:
having the energy will make everything else that much easier. The
Art of Manliness
blog has a post about a tech Sabbath, which sounds like a great idea
for getting in touch with Nature.
As
this is only about the setup, I'm not too sure how I'm going about
this yet. I've more research to do and I only have a basic idea of
what I want to do. I also have three areas I want to work on: mental,
psychical, and spiritual. However, I'm wondering if I can make those
more specific. I don't know. But I hope to come up with something for
you people soon.
Side-note
I
just want to say at the end of this that I'm grateful to the Stoic
community. I'm sort of like a leech. I hang off the body of Stoa
groups and suck out the wonderful philosophical blood, enriching
myself while doing nothing for others. Something like that. But I
don't want to do that anymore, so I'm going to try my best to post
here more, adding to the efforts rather than feeding off them. Thank
you, every last one of you, who're doing what they can to keep Stoa
alive.
