🖼️ Monday Muse
The “Monday Muse” is a weekly collection of reminders, insights, and maxims on the art of living. The term “muse” has two meanings: (1) a state of deep thought; and (2) a source of inspiration. May the following (in a small way) be a source of contemplation and wisdom to live your highest good.
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
The American publisher, editor, and author John Oakes (a previous podcast guest) on the art of fasting:
The choice to fast is more easily made if you know there will again be food on the other side of the experience. But to my mind, fasting is a sign of strength rather than privilege—a subtle difference, to be sure. A decision to put a hold on eating doesn’t necessarily indicate a surfeit of food. It only means the choice has been made not to eat. That decision is what I intend to explore.
Somewhere in his Book of Five Rings, the seventeenth-century swordsman Miyamoto Musashi writes that an effective warrior moves like a stream that flows over and around rocks. Although I am no warrior, to me, a self-imposed fast—even one that is not followed to the point of no return—is not dissimilar. It is a graceful way to confront immutable circumstance amid the constant battle of existence that sweeps us along. […]
Source: The Fast
📜 Perennial Maxim(s)
The American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1900—1970) on the fear to fully realize our potential:
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💡 Perennial Insight(s)
The British philosopher and author A.C. Grayling on seeking wisdom:
No single school has a monopoly of wisdom. For this reason one does well to shy away from putting oneself under a label and allowing the ‘–ism’ in question to do one’s thinking for one. Accepting an ‘–ism’ label is like donning spectacles that make the world look a particular way, magnifying some things and blocking out others. The Socratic challenge, on the interpretation given here, is to strive to avoid this and instead adopt the stance of intellectual freedom, trying to see clearly, without prejudices, and from different points of view. …
In my view the practice of discipleship, of being an epigone of an individual or a devotee of a school, is contrary to the fundamental challenge of philosophy, which is to think for oneself, to examine ideas critically, to see how well the claims of various philosophers stand up to scrutiny, to approach theories and thinkers alike in a spirit of constructive skepticism, and – in taking a position of one’s own, learning from and thinking about as much as one can gather of life and ideas as one goes along – to strive to ensure that one’s position is as cogent as one can make it, all the while being prepared to modify or abandon it if better arguments and evidence come along. […]
Source: Philosophy and Life
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W. Bertolotti
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