"Those who receive the bare theories immediately want to spew them, as an upset stomach does its food. First digest your theories and you won't throw them up. Otherwise they will be Caw, spoiled, and not nourishing. After you've digested them, show us the changes in your reasoned choices, just like the shoulders of gymnasts display diet and training, and as the craft of artisans show in what they've learned." Epictetus, Discourses, 4.8.35 B-37
What kind of person do I want to be?
First and foremost, I want to be kinder and less judgmental. I only want to own and carry my life’s accumulated baggage. Not the emotional detritus of others projected onto me. That requires discerning that which is in my control from that which is in the control of others, or outside the control of any one of us.
I want to continue my lifelong studies to better understand this world and its history, not concerning myself with my place in it. That specifically is of little interest to me. I have learned not to share what I learn as freely as I used to. I have the compulsion of a teacher, but I have learned there are too few adult students. My proclivity to share is a burden on others, at least, that is what I have deduced.
Hence this blog. I am showing, not telling. At the top of the list, it is intended for my own edification, as I reason out my thoughts as carefully as I am able, and then publishing them, knowing full well that few, if any, will read my reflections, my observations or my stoic prompts. My fondest hope is that some future descendant, that I will never know, will stumble upon my missives and feel that they might know me and my times better, just a little. Although admittedly myopic, my take on social and political developments, seen from where I sit, are collectively my message in a bottle to the future.
Beside trying to be a better person, I seek contentment. I am happier now then I have been in my entire life. I love and I know love, unconditionally. It gives me a great sense of hope that someone, a future relative doing genealogical research and who is interested in reading primary sources, will stumble on to my blog and take a walk with Teddi and me out onto the Causeway path, on a sunny day, in my generation's version of Vermont. If we are lucky, we will see the Osprey in their nest; this gives me great hope.
A work in progress.
