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🖼️ On the Worth of a Day, "Love Your Enemies", Philosophy, and Not Knowing
Monday Muse (Vol. 40)
Dear Readers,
Here is the latest Monday Muse with a meditation from our Dying Every Day series, a perennial reminder, insight, and a recommendation to consider.
Be wise and be well this week!
💀 Dying Every Day
The Dying Every Day series is now part of the Monday Muse! This series focuses on delivering Stoic meditations on the art of living. Each meditation provides a quote, a selected passage (from an original Stoic text), and a daily exercise.
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📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies.’ It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. […]
Source: Martin Luther King, Jr. (Learn more here)
💡 Perennial Insight(s)
Tinkering around the edges of our problems with scented candles, new exercise routines and productivity apps isn’t going to help much in the long-run, and no philosopher who is honest about it can give you a formula for being happy – certainly not for being happy all the time. Nevertheless, philosophy can point the way to the sources of satisfaction that are available to almost every human being and to strategies for facing off against the major threats to human happiness. […]
Source: How to Be an Epicurean by Catherine Wilson (Listen to my conversation with Catherine on In Search of Wisdom)
🔥 Recommendation(s)
This week’s recommendation is the practice of not knowing (the topic of our upcoming meditation for Wisdom is the Way). Throughout the week, consider being mindful of your assumptions. Attempt to notice how the mind naturally fills in the details of your experiences. In his speech, This is Water, the writer David Foster Wallace said, “To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties.” He called it “unimaginably hard” and ultimately the job of a lifetime.
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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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