Welcome, May!

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The past few weeks have been stressful. Training new employees, dealing with difficult customers, not sleeping well, not exercising (I’ve gained 20 pounds in the last two years), getting through family drama (two life-threatening events in the same day, 2000 miles apart: my dad’s heart attack in NM and a 9 year grandchild starting the rest of his life with Type 1 Diabetes) . . .  My CrossFit lifestyle withered into oblivion when I lost my job at the University in 2020, as Covid got going. Deep depression brought me to a standstill as I took a few months to try to reset. Since then, my physical status has been on steady decline. Now my daily schedule looks something like this: Work 3-11 pm (on a good day), Go to bed at 4 am, get up between 10:30 am and noon, get booted up and go back to work. If I get one day off a week I’m fortunate. At least I don’t have to work all night for now. That was the worst.  So I haven’t had time or energy to do much, even read, much less write. And since my

Like Water

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“The soul is like the bowl of water, with the soul's impressions like the rays of light that strike the water. Now, if the water is disturbed, the light appears to be disturbed together with it — though of course it is not. So when someone loses consciousness [composure], it is not the person's knowledge and virtues that are impaired, it is the breath that contains them [the spirit in which they exist]. Once the breath [spirit] returns to normal, knowledge and the virtues are restored to normal also.” (Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings)

The beauty of wisdom and loving it, the art of philosophy, is that wisdom never changes. One either does what is right or does what is not right -- wisdom never changes. One is shown to be wise by right and is shown to be foolish by what is not right. One may abandon wisdom, but wisdom will never abandon you. If the soul is disturbed by some minor distraction or flagrant foolishness, wisdom is not disturbed. When the soul is calmed, it is one with wisdom. 

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