🖌️ 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, insight, and wisdom to live your highest good.
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
The American existential psychologist Rollo May (1909—1994) on the creative life:
This brings us to the most important kind of courage of all. Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovery of new forms, new symbols, and new patterns on which a new society can be built. Every profession can and does require some creative courage. …
But the essence of being human is that in the brief moment, we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all. That we yearn to stretch the brief moment, to postpone our death a year or so, is surely understandable. But such postponement is bound to be a frustrating and ultimately a losing battle.
By the creative act, however, we are able to reach beyond our own death. This is why creativity is so important and why we need to confront the problem of the relationship between creativity and death. […]
Source: The Courage to Create
📜 Perennial Maxim(s)
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121—180) on distractions:
Once we discover what matters, we face the perennial challenge of maintaining our focus. Or, put another way, avoiding distractions (i.e., everything else).
What is your biggest distraction? Have you ever thought about documenting/tracking how you spend your time? You might be surprised to discover how much time you spend on activities you would label distractions.
Consider reflecting (or journaling) on what you deem to be most important in your life. Then, ask yourself, “What stands in the way?” or tends to distract you from what is most important in daily life.
💡 Perennial Insight(s)
The American professor and author Alan Jacobs on navigating life in the internet age:
… I’m going to argue here that the sense of defilement is, to a great degree, evoked first by information overload—a sense that we are always receiving more sheer data than we know how to evaluate—and a more general feeling of social acceleration—the perception that the world is not only changing but changing faster and faster. …
Navigating daily life in the internet age is a lot like doing battlefield triage. Given that what cultural critic Matthew Crawford calls the ‘attentional commons’ is constantly noisy—there are days we can’t even put gas in our cars without being assaulted by advertisements blared at ear-rattling volume—we also learn to be ruthless in deciding how to deploy our attention. We only have so much of it, and often the decision of whether or not to ‘pay’ it must be made in an instant. …
I am aware that I have taken on a difficult task here: paying attention to the past is a hard sell. I want to argue that immersion does not help you understand the place and time you’re in; the opposite is true. You have to step out and away and back and forward, and you have to do it regularly. […]
Source: Break Bread with the Dead
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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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