🖌️ 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.
You can listen to the Monday Muse on In Search of Wisdom each week; the audio version also includes a short clip from a previous episode.
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
The American philosopher Scott Samuelson (a previous podcast guest) on the mystery of suffering:
We should be people who understand our own vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of others, and who can respond creatively to the human condition. To wage war on suffering is to separate us from what makes us human: it inevitably generates abuse and meaninglessness. …
Most fundamentally, when we structure our lives exclusively around the fix-it mindset (or the need to remove all suffering), we spend our days at a remove from what endows them with value: our relationships lack depth, our food lacks savor, our music lacks beauty, our justice lacks mercy, our work seems burdensome, and our leisure activities kill time rather than enliven it. As Michel de Montaigne says of trying to combat the conditions of life itself, ‘Other wars act outward; this one acts also against itself, eats and destroys itself by its own venom . . . What have we come to? Our medicine carries infection.’ In short, the attempt to fix all suffering generates its own unique kinds of suffering: the devastation of unintended consequences and, more fundamentally, the deprivation of human value. […]
Source: Seven Ways to Look at Pointless Suffering
📜 Perennial Maxim(s)
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius on the art of thinking:
Although we don’t exactly choose the thoughts that come into our heads, we choose the ones we put into action or at least entertain. What types of thoughts do you want to put into action in your life?
💡 Perennial Insight(s)
The philosopher and author Skye Cleary on becoming who you are:
‘Just be yourself.’ The ‘just’ makes it sound so simple. If it were simple, the instruction wouldn’t be necessary. But as it turns out, it is necessary. We crave authenticity precisely because it is so pain-fully rare to find and difficult to achieve. In the end, we have to fight to become authentic. […]
Source: How to Be Authentic (Listen to the audio version of this week’s Muse below for a short clip from my conversation with Skye Cleary.)
🎧 Latest Podcast(s)
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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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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