Clinging to the Past

How can you experience the possibility of living an extraordinary life if you continue to cling to the past, or maybe more accurately relive the past over and over?

Well, you can’t!

So there must be a reason you repeat the same pattern of existence day after day. Maybe it is a fear you won’t achieve your financial goals without clinging to the life you have now. Do you think that after all these years you couldn’t possibly do any better financially unless you keep your shitty job. How many more hours, days, months, and years will you spend waiting? Your past has become your present and your present has become your future.

Do you have enough faith in yourself to do what you want to do, not what you feel is safe or reasonable?

Deep inside you realize that what you want from this life is just a decision away. The realization that each day is precious and that the future is what you make of it should be enough of a reason to stop living in this self-imposed prison. You spent most of your life living and doing for others, and now it is time to do something for yourself. Take back control of your life. Get off the fucking hamster wheel and put the past in the rearview mirror.

Planning Over Action

You don’t need another fucking plan, for Christ’s sake that’s all you do is create plans. Your new and better life only becomes available by taking action in the present moment. Fuck the plan, act!

Planning is great but only to a certain degree. When it gets to the point that 90% of your time is spent planning your future instead of acting to make it happen, you are in trouble. So you have a great idea for starting a business and you have identified the skills you will need and made a plan to acquire those skills. That’s great, now it is time to learn those new skills and execute your plan. If you wait to make sure you have planned out every little task and you have researched yourself into a coma then that opportunity may just slip away. I am personally guilty of this one. I plan out goals and reset them over and over instead of doing the things to achieve them. Guilty as charged!

You become so mired in the planning and second-guessing yourself that you aren’t accomplishing anything. You need a goal and a plan to achieve that goal, but as you probably have experienced nothing seems to go exactly as planned. There is a quote out there and I’m not sure who to attribute it to, but it makes my point.

If The Plan Doesn’t Work, Change The Plan, Not The Goal

Your plans will change as you learn more about what you are seeking but don’t give up on your goal. Your goal is created in your imagination expressing a desire or a dream. The point here is to not get into an infinite loop of planning without taking action. Revisit your plan periodically, but make sure most of your effort is not spent planning. If you like ratios maybe Action to Planning should be 10:1.

Desiring Certainty

It’s not like you don’t have any interests outside of your job as is the case with some people. You know exactly what you want to do, which is what makes not doing it such a tragedy. No, you my friend won’t take this leap of faith because you need certainty. There is no certainty in this world. You could be fired tomorrow, fall prey to a disease, or be hit by the proverbial bus. If you truly believe there is no certainty other than as the Buddhists would say that life is suffering then you could drop this whole charade.

Here is a certainty for you. If you keep clinging to the past it is certain to repeat itself and your dreams of a better life will go unfulfilled. Truly exceptional people understand that there is no certainty and they accept it. Once you understand that nothing but suffering is certain then the whole world is available to you. Just to clarify even though life is suffering there is a path to the cessation of suffering, so even suffering isn’t 100% certain. My advice is even though we seek certainty, we will never really find it. Seeking certainty is a human trait that we have used for thousands of years to help us survive on this planet. Now your desire for certainty is just an impediment to making progress. Stop It!

Brainwashing / Social Conditioning

Is it the fear of the unknown or have you just become so brainwashed and conditioned that even though the guards have left the building and opened the gate you still remain in your prison cell? Oh, hell it’s probably a little of both. Habits can be a tough thing to break, especially those that don’t serve you anymore. Maybe you have been working in a profession for twenty years or more. You feel safe in the knowledge and skills you acquired over the years. It would be nearly impossible if your whole identity wasn’t associated with this role/profession. You have become a Doctor, Lawyer, Software Developer, Security Architect, Plumber, Teacher, Social Worker, Electrician, or whatever it is you do for a living.

In fact, this profession has become your past and it has an effect on all the other factors that are holding you back from pursuing your goals, passion, or dreams. It might be that you didn’t start out wanting to be an Accountant your whole life, but over the years that is exactly what happened. It’s not only you who see yourself in a particular role, but so do the people close to you. You will hear people say that human beings are creatures of habit. That may be where it starts, but ultimately you have been brainwashed or conditioned and this role becomes your identity. You might think you are a role that you play, but you are just assuming that role for some period of time. You are a multi-dimensional being and as such you are capable of learning new things and assuming different roles, so if you spent twenty-plus years as say an Accountant it doesn’t mean you need to spend the next 20 years in that role. That’s why I like Jim Rohn’s short but profound quote:

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

Jim Rohn

Lack Of Confidence

Maybe it’s not just the brainwashing or desire for certainty that is holding you back. Maybe it is a lack of confidence in yourself, a feeling that changing the direction in your life and doing something completely new scares you to death. Every time you thought about doing something else in the past you talked yourself out of it. You would say to yourself that you can’t learn the skills you would need for this new type of work or even take up a new hobby. Deep inside you know that’s just bullshit! I mean how much did you know about your current role ten or twenty years ago, or back when you were in High School?

Did you ever wonder why some of the stupidest people in the world become so successful? Well, one of the things they are not lacking is confidence. In fact, I would hazard to guess that they sometimes border on being egomaniacs. I’m not advocating that you become an egomaniac, but instead, realize you have infinite potential if you just begin believing in yourself. Look at your track record and all the things you have achieved and succeded at. You need to understand that you will develop the skills you need to achieve your goals. You may not possess them now, but put in the effort and you will succeed and this will help you overcome any lack of confidence you currently have.

Advice From Those Close To You

If you love what you do for a living then keep doing it, but if you’re working at a job that bores you to death or worse yet, you hate it, move on. One of the other things that could be holding you back from taking the leap besides desiring certainty, brainwashing, or a lack of confidence may be other people. Is a family member, a spouse, or a friend advising you to keep doing what you are doing? Many of us have been raised to take care of others as our priority. Does any of this sound familiar? You don’t want to disappoint people close to you and switching careers could directly affect them. It isn’t really your uncertainty that is stopping you, but instead, it is theirs. The thing is that when it is all said and done, this life you have is actually yours, but you don’t really view it that way. Hey, you and most of humanity are either totally self-absorbed or people-pleasers.

Remember as we reviewed your own uncertainty and conditioning well those close to you also see you as a role(s), and your desire to do something different with your life is unsettling to them. Don’t be surprised when you discuss your goals with them if they aren’t ready to get on board with this new plan. So should you continue to live your life for everyone else? Hell No!

If they cannot support the new life you want to lead then here is where you have to get a little selfish. You only get one shot at this rodeo we call life and you can either claim your life or live it for others, it’s ultimately your choice.

Conclusion

We have talked about planning over action, desire for certainty, brainwashing and conditioning, lack of confidence, and advice from those close to you, as factors contributing to clinging to the past. I personally have experienced all of these and it has caused a lot of grief and procrastination. While these factors are powerful forces that keep you reliving the past, they pale in comparison to the pain that will haunt you from not pursuing a better future. These factors are dream crushers and for you and me they become convenient excuses for not pursuing our dreams.

I hope that this post has shed some light on what might be holding you back from pursuing the goals that could lead to a better life. I would love to hear what you think.

Namaste

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“Copyright 2023 TheStoicBuddhist.com“

Enough Self Improvement

Our world is always imploring us to improve. You need to have a better physique, create some new skills so that you don’t get left behind, improve your relationships, your spirituality, learn a new language, or manage your money better. Here is the thing; the list is endless and 90% of the investment you make reading or taking classes in self improvement is pretty much worthless. Why do we get on the self improvement treadmill and never get off? Sometimes we are told we aren’t good enough, or if not that directly maybe it is something you could improve in a particular area. I fucking hate feedback! Often it’s not what other people are telling you, but what you are telling yourself. Now you know perfectly well what you might want to work on to get a little better, or maybe a lot better, but before I take any actual action, I think it would be nice to read another self improvement book to find the secret to life and then everything gets better.

My advice to you and to myself: Stop all this fucking self improvement bullshit, including planning out every little detail of your future, hoping that someday all this shit will lead to some version of your life where you will be happy, thus the Lao Tzu quote above.

You already have everything you need to be happy. Do you ever wonder why those monetary goals for a bigger house and more stuff doesn’t inspire you? In fact the things you think you need to acquire to be happy you probably already have. Stop selling yourself short because you haven’t spent 10 years mastering a skill before you can call yourself a teacher, a writer, an investor, a painter (pictures or rooms), or whatever you want to be. You already are the person you want to be, but you think I need more skills, more experience, always trying to get better. You would be better off just diving into whatever it is you want to do and learn through experience. It might not be pretty, but reading 50 books on the subject and taking countless classes won’t really get you closer to your goal.

The key difference in someone that accomplishes a lot and feels happy is that they don’t waste their time creating endless plans, reading self improvement books like The Secret, Think and Grow Rich, and on an on, which I myself am guilty of. The folks that get things done for the most part are those that spend their time doing or being. As an example they don’t dream about being a writer, instead they work from the premise that they are a writer and start writing.

While introspection can be a good thing, there is a fine line between being introspective and being totally self absorbed. When you are self absorbed you make yourself, your career, the way you feel, what’s wrong with you, and everything else a walking talking reflection of yourself. So instead of just living and enjoying each day you analyze the living hell out of yourself and others with some desire to make things better. Better for what? Well so that you can do it over and over again. You run as fast as you can chasing the shiny object which might be an idea or some material thing, just to get it and then start chasing the next thing.

The whole self improvement rabbit hole is perpetuated by a feeling that you are not good enough and need to improve. You spend a lot of your time trying to change who you are, to become smarter, more valuable, richer, and whatever else your trying to improve. Not only do you feel compelled to improve yourself, but you want other people to perceive you in a certain way, and for what?

Ultimately all this self improvement shit just leaves you exhausted and bored to death, living the same day over and over. Often we work our whole lives doing something we really don’t want to do so that you don’t have to do it in the future.

It would be better to have some belief in yourself and stop looking at yourself as some kind of self improvement project. Listen, I’m not against improving your skills, relationships, or spirituality, but these broad stroke approaches advocated by the self improvement books and courses will not get it done. Have you ever noticed that even authors you like will write one book on self improvement using a particular philosophy and when the royalties slow down, they create a new or enhanced philosophy to life that you should adopt. Aside from the obvious monetary reasons, they realize you are just a self improvement junkie, looking for another quick fix to your problems.

I like this quote by Alan Watts.

This is the real secret of life – Be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Alan Watts

It would be too simple to advocate for living in the present and viewing work as play as Alan Watts said. A simple truth that may be difficult to actually do, probably doesn’t resonate with most people. I mean when you could look to Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Mark Manson, James Clear, Dale Carnegie, Mel Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, Stephen Covey, or Jim Kwik for wisdom instead of Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Jesus, or Muhammad then by all means do so. We as humans seek the more complex answers to our questions instead of the time tested philosophy from Buddhism, Stoicism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Take it from one of the all time self improvement junkies, don’t waste your life looking to self professed gurus for wisdom. I’ve spent thousands of hours reading some of the folks I mentioned above and many more not mentioned, and for what I really learned from it all, I would have been better off sticking to the classics or spent more time meditating.

Now with that said I do include the Bible, Quran, Pali Canon, Meditations, and Letters from a Stoic as a form of self improvement. I just think this multi-billion dollar self improvement industry preys upon our feeling of not being enough or having enough. Realize you are unique in your own right and perfectly equipped to follow your own path on this thing we call life.

Namaste

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“Copyright 2023 TheStoicBuddhist.com”

Contemplation – October 21, 2023

Be grateful for this day for many will not have this opportunity, and did not wake up. I recently lost a loved one, and as I’ve got older I began to realize how precious each day is.

To be alive is your reward, nothing more and nothing is more precious.

Wasting your time resisting what is will bring no peace of mind.

This world is imperfect, accept things the way they are and contentment will follow.

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” Lao Tzu

Now go about your business with a giving heart. Seek to be a blessing to others for that is your reward.

Namaste

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“Copyright 2023 TheStoicBuddhist.com. All Rights Reserved”

Contemplation – September 12, 2023

I’m starting a form of blogging that reflects a particular thought or thoughts in a shorter format. Never fear I will not be giving up my typical longer format posts. I hope you enjoy these brief contemplations.

Today’s Contemplation

So it begins. The time for letting go is here. The dharma will be realized in this lifetime.

Enlightenment is now my primary goal, and all other goals must either come from this, or become secondary.

My purpose is to follow the path to nibbana to extinguish the fevers of greed, hate, and delusion

Namaste

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Copyright 2023 TheStoicBuddhist.com. All Rights Reserved

Escaping the Matrix

Previously, I wrote about what the Matrix is and our participation in it. So please read The Matrix before reading this post as it will provide some context that should make this post more understandable. In The Matrix I explained the contrast between the cold and ruthless corporation and the humans that work there. Given the reality of the matrix this conflict is irreconcilable. So you are challenged to make the decision to stay or escape the matrix. Servitude or freedom, that is the question.

Contemplating the Escape

On the surface it seems like an easy decision, where you choose freedom of course and make your escape. However you have been serving your master the corporation for many years, and you are accustomed to this thing called money. Like many other addictions you tell yourself that I’ll quit in a few months or maybe work another year and then I’ll be free. This is referred to as the one more year syndrome. Here is the thing, not only are you addicted to the money but you are also battling a unwillingness to change your life. You have become comfortable doing this thing you have done for so many years, and you fear the unknown. It is even possible that your fear of the unknown is greater than the gains you perceive of being free. It’s kind of like someone who has been a prisoner for decades, the front gate is unlocked, and you don’t even consider just walking out. Holy Shit!

Most people that are considering escaping the matrix have questions that they need to contemplate. I put together a short list that I’ve personally struggled with in the past. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but something to think about. I would caution you not get too hung up on answering these questions. Notice I have not asked the question, which is Why should I escape the matrix? You already know the answer to that one.

Questions to contemplate:

How will I make money and pay for all this shit?
  • That dream you have had in your mind for years, undoubtedly you have been thinking what if I could monetize what I really want to do.
  • Maybe you have been saving up for your escape and that is the answer to having income to fund your free life.
  • Maybe like most us you spend too much, have to much shit, and could cut down on your level of consumerism.
  • Sometimes it is a matter of faith in your ability to figure it out. Sounds week, huh? Do you really think that the thing you have been doing while employed in the matrix is the only way you can generate some income? Fuck No!
What will I do with all this found time on my hands?
  • Pursue your passion.
  • Enjoy it! Yes, you have escaped and to begin with you should get some kind of enjoyment just from this fact.
  • All those hobbies you haven’t have time for are now yours to pursue.
  • Looking for some meaning in your life? Join a non-profit, a charity, a church, or do your civic duty and get involved in a cause (climate change or renewable energy), or political party.
What will other people think?
  • If your talking about those still grinding away in the matrix, they will be envious of your escape.
  • Who cares! What your really wrestling with is what you will think about your freedom.
  • Listen you are embarking on a new life, one that is so different from what you are accustomed to that you will feel a bit alienated from those still plugging away in the matrix. You are freeing yourself from this consumer driven, wealth obsessed society, and embracing a life where you now own your time, which is the most precious thing of all.
  • If you lived your life worrying about what your co-workers, your spouse, friends, or family thought about you, then stop it!

Breaking Free

There is nothing wrong with taking a somewhat methodical approach to making the decision to escape the matrix or to keep on doing what you have been doing, living in the status quo.

Most of us start with the empirical method which is to use a spreadsheet to calculate the financial gain of working longer. Usually this is expressed as if I worked one, two, or three more years. Don’t get too enamored by this approach as it is inherently one sided, and only considers the financial gain of working longer, but fails to consider the non financial costs of working longer. In fact if you choose to make your decision based on the financial impact, well then you might as well keep your shitty job and work until you die. You might guess that I’ve done this myself and was amazed at the amount of money I would have if I continued working in the matrix for two or three more years. Fortunately I knew the cost of doing this and over time became less enthusiastic about my forecasted financial gains.

Given the limitations of the purely financial approach, you might consider a more holistic approach to making the decision to break free or stay in the matrix.

Now there are many factors to consider, but here are a few that come to mind:

  • Physical Health – What toll does your current job take on your physical health? Your 9 to 5 is likely taking a toll on your physical health or at the very least compromising your opportunity to improve your health by having the time to exercise more, eat better, etc.
  • Mental Health – All the stress you endure is messing with your mind and likely making your life a whole lot less enjoyable than would otherwise be possible. Not only is this stress making you miserable, but it is shortening your life.
  • Regret – Will you regret working longer especially if you are getting older? Of course you will. Very few people have ever regretted escaping the matrix, wishing they had worked longer.
  • Joy and Happiness – To what extent is your happiness important to you? Silly question, but this is a huge factor for most of us.
  • Pursuing your Dreams – That thing you always wanted to do, or do more of. Call it a dream or your passion. What price are you paying now by not pursuing your dreams?
  • Relationships – Anyone that spends the majority of their days in the matrix have compromised their relationships. Aside from the joy it could bring to you and others, by cultivating more meaningful relationships, not doing so may end up being one of your biggest regrets.
  • Controlling Time – How much does it matter to you that you have some control over how you spend the time allotted to you each day? Those that escape the matrix have infinitely more control over how they spend the limited time we all have. Just for an example, say you work 45 hours per week on average. If you sleep 8 hours a day you have 16 waking hours available to do stuff. Excluding weekends, this is 5 x 16 = 80 waking hours per work week. If you exist in the matrix you have 80 – 45 = 35 hours to do what you want or needs to be done. Any way you look at it during the work week you have less than 50% of the waking hours that are yours.
  • Financial – The reality is the vast majority of us needs money to pay for necessities and wants. In our society this can be of paramount importance for many people. Your servitude in the matrix, pays your bills, and may provide a little left over for savings, but your likely not to become super wealthy. Realize that making finances a priority isn’t necessarily advocating for staying in the matrix, as it is very possible that your lack of financial success may be attributed to you being stuck in the matrix in the first place.

Let’s say for fun I decided to rank these items using the following ranking scale:

  • 1 – not important
  • 2 – important
  • 3 – very important

My guess that if you are considering escaping the matrix just about every one of these factors would be ranked at a 2 or 3. Is your decision getting any easier?

Maybe you love your job, have a good work life balance, and no other aspirations outside of your career. But be honest with yourself, you would be a very small minority of those that exist in the matrix. Most of us dream about a greater purpose for out life. We seek some degree of freedom to make choices on how we spend our time and with who we spend our time with.

By now you have probably made your choice, and like all restless prisoners you are contemplating an escape. Depending on your finances and the amount of planning you have already done you might just jump and sever your relationship with your employer. Just do it and escape approach, which is highly recommended if you ready.

The second approach is required if money is an issue, and you haven’t planned what you will do when you break free from the matrix. This approach means you need to plan your exit before jumping. If you decide you need a little more time before making your escape from the matrix, be wary setting that date too far into the future. It is better to take a leap of faith too early than to allow the matrix to destroy your decision to escape. This then becomes the I’ll work one more year syndrome that I mentioned earlier. This one more year can turn into multiple years of bondage.

I won’t try and kid you, there is an element of risk in making your escape, but there is a wonderful new life that awaits you when you walk out that door. Envision what that new life will be like as you finally have time to pursue your interests, give back to the community, restore your health, become more mindful, and have the time to create better relationships. Unlike a real prison, in the matrix the door is wide open. No one will shoot you as you walk out. In fact after a few months they won’t even remember who you were.

In my next post I will discuss how sometimes remaining in the matrix may make sense at least for a while. This can give you time to plan your escape and make the preparations needed.

Go ahead and comment if you have escaped the matrix or are contemplating it.

Namaste

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“Copyright 2023 TheStoicBuddhist.com. All Rights Reserved”

The Matrix

Not to be confused with the movie “The Matrix” staring Keanu Reeves. I’m referring to the corporate matrix that many us spend much of our life toiling away. Having worked for corporations for over 40 years I have experienced very good organizations, average organizations, and well really messed up ones. Generally there are certain relationships that exist between a characteristic and the functioning of a corporation. In my experience most smaller companies are less dysfunctional and the larger companies are more dysfunctional. This is not a hard fast rule, but there does seem to be a correlation between the size of an organization and its level of dysfunction. You might also draw a correlation between the age of a corporation and level of dysfunction, but many corporations try to re-invent themselves periodically so this doesn’t always hold true. An example is McDonald’s that was founded in 1940 and Google founded in 1998. McDonald’s has been around 58 more years, but one might say it is no more dysfunctional than Google. Another correlation can exist based on the type of industry / sector that a business is categorized. For instance a insurance company will not survive unless it is very efficient versus a technology company that may have higher margins, which sometimes encourages reckless behavior from a business perspective.

Over time as a company grows, it begins to implement an increasing number of processes and controls. In my experience many of these processes have not been vetted against the simple equation comparing the ongoing cost of the process versus the value it provides the organization. This kind of process creep exists in almost all businesses, as the company seeks to create greater control over the workforce. Often times the corporation does not want to leave decision making to employees but instead implements a process that it hopes controls costs or improves compliance in some way. Examples of this include simple contract changes that require three levels of approval, instead of just empowering the first level manager to approve the change, or having painful promotion processes that require committee’s to make the decision instead of an employee’s manager.

When a company is initially created, it will depend on people to make decisions, and does things in a lean fashion, but as it becomes larger it begins to hire more and more employee’s, many that do not contribute to the bottom line (cost management or revenue generation). My experience is that lots of new roles are created for what I call bullshit jobs, essentially non essential work. Well if you have a lot of time on your hands, then you begin creating your own organization and start building new processes. Unfortunately the people in these bullshit jobs don’t understand process design and the cost versus value equation. Over the course of 20 years or so there is a process for everything and each of them has a corresponding burden that is foisted on the employee, and competes for their time, which initially was dedicated to their primary job functions. A couple things begin to occur, the first being the employee becomes more and more dissatisfied with their role as they must adhere to this overload of processes that they are asked to perform. The second thing that happens is they have less time to devote to their core job functions and the company must hire yet more employees to do the work and becomes even more inefficient. Remember some of this occurs because it is human nature to build your own little empires, thus adding more bullshit jobs and people to do those jobs, which then makes it more difficult to pursue the real goals of the company. All this results in less autonomy for the employee and an erosion of job satisfaction.

The point of all this is that there are corporations and there are people that work for them. Eventually the goals of the corporation and the employees begins to diverge in kind of a Grand Canyon way. If you need any evidence of this look at the layoffs at Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Salesforce, and on and on. Either in anticipation or as a reaction to some sort of slow down in the economy, a recession if you will, these companies have slashed in some cases pretty high percentages of their workforce. The thinking was something like this. Well we better proactively cut costs in the event our sales decline or our cost of goods sold increases. A corporation does not possess human qualities like compassion, loyalty, empathy, love, or pain. This dichotomy between the corporation and employees is the world we live in. Actually this is really not something new and has been going on for the past 50+ years, probably becoming more common in the 60’s and 70’s as we began to offshore manufacturing decimating cities like Detroit Michigan and Cleveland Ohio. This trend continued throughout the Midwest and the rest of the United States. All for lower costs, resulting in higher profits and cheaper products.

If this is the current state of the matrix then you have to ask yourself, do I want to play this game? Finally you come to realize that the rationale thought you have cultivated all these years, makes it almost impossible to continue living in the matrix. Some of you may escape, but for the majority the matrix will lure you back offering riches that you can’t seem to walk away from. You have then resigned yourself to this life, convincing yourself it really isn’t so bad, but in your heart you know you have made the wrong choice. Money or Freedom?

In the next installment “Escaping The Matrix” I would like to make a case for choosing freedom.

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“Copyright 2023 TheStoicBuddhist.com. All Rights Reserved”

Something to Think About: The Easy Life

This is the first in a series of shorter blog posts created to explore a concept or idea briefly, so “Something to Think About”. I realize that sometimes you don’t have time to read 10 or 20 pages and this is my way of providing a more frequent stream of ideas to provide something to think about. I hope you enjoy, and please post a comment and we can have a dialog..

The ironic thing about life is that as we age we think life will be easier. We can retire and do whatever we want, living a life of leisure. Several things get in our our way:

  • Our expectation that our problems will go away. As human beings we think too much and set expectations that don’t coincide with reality on this earth. The over active mind will help create new problems for you, real or perceived.
  • The fact that we are physical beings and will have to experience a decline in our body. This results in increasing issues with our health and pain. Now you can slow down this decline to some degree with exercise and nutrition, but you cannot totally avoid it.
  • The very idea that I will wake up every morning seeking some form of leisure may end up getting old after a while. If this is your sole purpose, then you will soon find that you can only play so much golf, eat, sleep, walk, read, or whatever your thing is.

So you go from struggling everyday with all those normal responsibilities like making a living, paying your bills, dealing with difficult people, all the time waiting for retirement to simplify your life. In essence we are looking to the future to alleviate our stress and problems, so we can live the easy life. The reality is that if the purpose of our life is seeking pleasure then we are likely to end up disappointed and maybe worse depressed.

I’m going to be blunt here and I hope I don’t offend anyone. I really fucking hate the word retirement when used in the context of the attainment of the of easy life. As the Buddha taught life is not easy in fact it is filled with dukkha “pain and suffering”, much of it imposed on us by our perceptions. Often in life, a change in circumstances is just trading one problem for another. Maybe you will have less stressful problems when you retire, but they will be traded for an increasing awareness of your own impermanence. This increasing awareness of impermanence brought to light by declining health and your friends and family leaving this world, is an opportunity for great wisdom and appreciation for your own life.

I did mention this would be short exploration of the “Easy Life”, so let me summarize and bid you au revoir. Don’t spend your life wishing you could do less, seeking some hedonistic existence. Instead look at your new found freedom as the opportunity to double down on your purpose. Remember you woke up today, so you can spend time learning something, helping someone else, and doing something useful. Time to pay it back, to your family, to your community, to the world at large.

I would love your thoughts on retirement and the so called easy life. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Namaste

"Copyright 2023 TheStoicBuddhist.com. All Rights Reserved"

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The Alchemist – Book Review

Inspirational Book Reviews

I decided to read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho because of so many recommendations I encountered in my reading and possibly from something I saw on YouTube. As with the majority of my reviews I am not going to spoil the book for you by giving you a blow by blow commentary, but focus more on what I perceive as the reasons you should consider reading it.

Book Quality

Before I provide a brief summary of the book I wanted to discuss the physical aspects of the hard cover version I read. Overall the book is very high quality from the cover, quality of the pages, and type. The size of the book is just right 8 1/2 inches high and about 6 inches wide. As mentioned the type quality is pretty good and probably about 11 pitch making the 176 pages easy to read. This version of the book…

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Marcus Aurelius MEDITATIONS

Inspirational Book Reviews

I am writing this review of the book Marcus Aurelius MEDITATIONS translated and with an introduction by Gregory Hays. There are a number of translations of Meditations, but this is the one that Ryan Holiday recommended and is considered by many to be the best. I would recommend getting the hard cover version of the book, available at Amazon for around $11. I’ve listened to the audio version, but for me the written version is superior, making it easier to focus and really absorb the information. The hardcover version has very clear type, not too small and easy to read. The book overall is very high quality.

My copy of Meditations with a few bookmarks, well more than a few.

Summary

In this translation of Meditations the introduction is about 50 pages, not a trivial amount of reading. I would recommend reading the introduction at least once, as it contains…

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Quotes from Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Statue depicting what Marcus Aurelius might have looked like

I’m working on a book review of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but I thought I would share some of my favorite quotes from the book with you. I should have the book review done in a couple of days.

Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus’ death in 169. He was the last of the Five Good Emperors and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. All the quotes provided on this page are from the book Meditations, translation by Gregory Hays.

Favorite Quotes from Meditations

“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.” Marcus Aurelius Meditations 2:4

“Yes, keep on degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the solus of others.” Marcus Aurelius Meditations 2:6

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. But death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all  these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful-and hence neither good nor bad.” Marcus Aurelius Meditations 2:11

“No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says of does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.” Marcus Aurelius Meditations 7:15

“The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. Not to see this is ignorance. To see it and not seek safety means misery.” Marcus Aurelius Meditations 8:48

I have a few more Marcus Aurelius quotes, and continue to add to this collection. All the quotes come from the book Meditations. Here is my current collection. https://josephsacco.com/quotes-marcus-aurelius/

Please check out my companion blog inspirationalbookreviews 
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