Dear Readers,
Here is the latest Monday Muse with an audio meditation from the 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 delivers audio meditations on the art of living. Each meditation provides a quote, a selected passage (from an original Stoic text), and a daily exercise to contemplate.
“In dying, which is the greatest task we have to perform, practice is no help. We may use habit and experience to strengthen ourselves against pain, poverty, shame, and other misfortunes, but death we can try only once; we are all apprentices with respect to it.” — Montaigne
Do not despise death, but be content with it since this, too, is one of those things nature wills. For what it is to be young and grow old, and to increase and reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and grey hair, and to father children, and to be pregnant and to give birth, and all the other natural operations the seasons of your life bring – so also is dissolution. This, then, is the way of one who is reflective: to be neither careless nor impatient nor arrogant with respect to death but to wait for it as one of the operations of nature. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.3
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Daily Exercise: Consider reflecting on the benefits of being mortal. How might our impermanent nature actually help us to lead meaningful lives?
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
In all cases, there is an interplay between limit and possibility, but also with freedom. We think of limitations (especially death) as things that disrupt our freedom precisely because they remove possibilities. This book argues otherwise. Paradoxically, limit gives birth to freedom. … The game of life must contain boundaries. And a good thing too. While we are seemingly squeezed by our lack of unlimited possibilities (i.e., our short lives), an unlimited being is squeezed in other ways: it would simply not have any means to enjoy a meaningful existence as we do. It is an existence as boring as the game with no rules in which there is nothing to act against and nothing to act for. […]
Source: Life is Short by Dean Rickles (Listen on In Search of Wisdom)
💡 Perennial Insight(s)
Despite the profound difference between Stoic and Epicurean doctrines, one can discern, underlying the two doctrines, an important analogy in the experience of the present. It can be defined as follows: Epicureanism and Stoicism privilege the present over the past, and especially over the future. They made it a principle that happiness must be found in the present alone, that an instant of happiness is equivalent to an eternity of happiness, and that happiness can and must be found immediately, right now, at once. […]
Source: Don’t Forget to Live by Pierre Hadot
🔥 Recommendation(s)
This week’s recommendation is Setting the Bar — a Substack by my friend Shane Trotter (I think it’s a must-read!). Shane and I are working on a joint venture called The Character Lab, a podcast series discussing questions on character formation, virtue, community, meaning, and much more.
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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.
P.S. If you’re interested in becoming a member but cannot afford it, feel free to request a complimentary membership or use this discount link.
The Art of Being Mortal, Freedom, and Finding Happiness