On Polymaths and Big Ideas

CHAPTER 3

Back to where we left off,  “The Practicing Stoic, A Philosophical User’s Manual,” by Ward Farnsworth, a.k.a. hero #2.*

There are several reasons to like this book.  First, it's a beautiful and artfully constructed hardback, published by David R. Godine.  

Second, what Farnsworth does with effect is break out the basic ideas of Stoic philosophy in an accessible manner, using the words of the stoics themselves to illustrate context and application of those ideas to normal daily living. **

A crucial truth which the Stoics go after is that life is not forever and we should not allow externals (distractions which we cannot control or influence) to fool us otherwise and thereby waste the limited time we have.  

Their focus on mortality is not morbid, but is rather a practical encouragement to treat diminishing days as the precious things they are. Their ideas on meaning, human nature and exercises to improve the self echo into our own time.

So, back to COVID and lockdown.  Reading Farnsworth and then doing a deeper dive into the authors he references, helped me get to a mental/emotional place where I seriously engaged the topic of how I wanted to spend the precious breaths summing to life’s indeterminate remaining span.***

I had been focused on too many “externals” in the Stoic parlance (all the devils and usual vanities were there: worry about financial security; worry about what others would think; worry about perceived loss of prestige/status/place, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah). 

But now I was now armed with a method and grammar for caging my phantom hobgoblins and mapping a different route.

A change of direction would do me good, though the questions “what”, “how” and “when” preyed upon my mind.

Though I’m no spring chicken (I turned 57 in May), stepping out of a corporate job did not mean I was ready for my dotage!  

Unquestionably, I would do something else.

Which is where I’ll pick up next time. 

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Until next time.

Be well everybody,