Dear Friends,
Here is the latest Monday Muse with a morning meditation, perennial reminder, question, and recommendation(s) to consider.
Be wise and be well this week!
📿 Morning Meditation
This week’s morning meditation is courtesy of The Wisdom School podcast (Apple or Spotify). Today’s meditation is a short reflection (delivered in a Lectio Divina style) from Discourses by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
As the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard writes: there is “bliss in melancholy and sadness” and researchers from the University of New South Wales have found that accepting and allowing for temporary sadness helps to improve our attention to detail, increases perseverance, promotes generosity and even makes us more grateful for what we’ve got. Sadness has a point. It can tell us when something is wrong, if we let it. Sadness is the temporary emotion that we all feel on occasions when we’ve been hurt or something is wrong in our lives. It is a message. […]
Source: How to Be Sad by Helen Russell (Listen to the conversation).
💡 Perennial Question(s)
Who do you think you are?
Self-knowledge is critical for solving the practical problems involved in getting through life. If you want to be healthy, you have to know not just about the human body in general, but also about your own particular allergies, habits, and ailments. Choosing a job or a partner means knowing something about what you find meaningful and what you just can’t stand. An awareness of your own quirks, character, and preferences is important for figuring out what works for you. Self-knowledge is also tricky—tricky because it is especially elusive. We commonly learn about ourselves only indirectly. Often it is only by reading the reactions of others that we can see how harsh, kind, or annoying we are. It is also because when trying to know ourselves, the thing we are trying to see is the very thing that does the looking. […]
Source: Seeing Cleary by Nic Bommarito (Listen to the conversation).
🔥 Recommendation(s)
This week's recommendation is not a podcast or YouTube video. It is silence. There’s a reason that Blaise Pascal stressed, “All of humanity's problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Paradoxically, sitting quietly can be one of the most challenging aspects of our day. Consider spending a few minutes (or longer) in silence this week.
🎧 Recent Podcast(s)
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Thank you for reading/listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
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