🌷 Sunday Snippets: December 22nd, 2024
Including steps to deal with uncertainty.
Hi all,
Here are the latest Stoic snippets for you to enjoy this Sunday!
Wishing you a great week ahead,
Allan
📌 Stoic Reminder
🔮 New Substack Post
4 Stoic Steps To Deal With Future Uncertainty - In this post, I share a short sequence of thoughts and actions that I find helpful when worry about a future event starts to kick in.
Future events can cast a shadow over the intervening days that lead up to them if we let them. Thankfully, there’s a lot of good advice to be found in Stoicism that can help us break free from this kind of anxiety.
📖 Book I’m Reading
The Poet and the Sage - This book is by Simon Drew, who is well-known for his Practical Stoic podcast, which has since evolved into The Walled Garden. In The Poet and the Sage, Simon uses both poetry and prose to explore philosophical themes like paths to wisdom and fulfillment.
From the description:
An esoteric work that employs deep symbolism and archetypal metaphor. Conveyed through the time-tested language of poetry and prose, it merges philosophy, theology, mysticism, and mythology to reveal profound truths about human nature and our shared aspiration to reunite with the divine essence within us.
🌷 What paid subscribers received this week
5 new Monday to Friday Micro Morning Meditations, including this one:
If you’d like to start receiving daily Micro Morning Meditations (and gain access to the past archive of 500+ editions), you can become a paid subscriber here.
📃 Reading Recommendation
How Dogs Add Value to Both Life and Death - This is a great reflection by
on what a dog can do for a person and what the Stoic philosopher Epictetus might think of it. Here’s some of what he says:This, then, is the answer to the question: with the dog, a moment is no longer merely another moment in the flow of time, but a thing to be savored and shared, a sense of we-are-living-this-second-of-life-together. A walk to the kitchen might turn into a foot and paw race to see who can get there first, or simply a reminder that even this ten meter walk to get some water is a once in a lifetime experience to savor fully.
📜 Quote For The Week Ahead
In all we do, almost the first thing we think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the troubles and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score; it is the anxiety which is at the bottom of all that feeling of self-importance, which is so often mortified because it is so very morbidly sensitive.
—Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
🎙 Latest Podcast Episode
A Short Reminder To Do Less - “If you seek tranquillity, do less,” wrote Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations. “More accurately, do what’s essential...and in the requisite way.” In this week’s new podcast episode, we draw from that advice and think about how we might better focus on the things we should be focusing on.
I’ve learned about doing less to achieve tranquility. Many of my days as a retiree are spent without a TV or laptop. I do quite a bit of reading and writing. It’s provided me with a respite from the constant movements of others and my former self.
Thank you for the shout out and roll up Allan, very much appreciated.