Category: Sage Advice
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Read Old Books
Old books are sovereign antidotes to the idiocies of the age, both the idiocies of style and those of content.
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Count Your Blessings . . .
. . . and discount your curses.
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The ‘Floaters’ of Memory
We should look past useless memories to present realities in the way we look past the floaters in our visual field. To concentrate on the detritus of memory is only to enliven what ought to be left to slumber.
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The Ultimate Hiccup Cure
A panacea that cures all your earthly ills in a manner most definitive. Life in the fast lane often leads to a quick exit from life's freeway. You may recall Terry Kath, guitarist for the band Chicago. In 1978, while drunk, he shot himself in the head with a 'unloaded' gun. At first he had…
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A Way to Live
Live as if life's chiaroscuro will resolve itself, not one day, but beyond time, into clear light.
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Useless Rehearsals
Rehearsals are for a future performance. Why then are you 'rehearsing' that altercation with so-and-so from twenty years ago? Do you plan to bring it back to the stage?
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How to Read an Online Article Without Distraction
I thank long-time blogger buddy Bill Keezer for pointing out something that should have been obvious. To read an online article at a money-grubbing site such as NRO, a site awash with advertising, moving images, noise, and what all else, click on the 'print' icon. The article should appear without the junk. But you knew…
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Nassim Taleb’s Argument for Banning Semi-Automatic Weapons
Just over the transom an e-mail from someone who wants me to review Nassim Taleb's latest book. So I asked Mr. Google to tell me who this Taleb fellow is and he referred me to Nassim Taleb's Super-Simple Argument for Banning Semi-Automatic Weapons. After reading this incoherent Facebook posting of his, I decided that time…
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Do Not Multiply Enemies Beyond Necessity
Suppose you value an old friend, a neighbor, a family member, a hiking companion, but differ with him or her on one or more points of ideology. As a general rule, one admitting of exceptions, I recommend assiduously avoiding the points of difference and cleaving to the uncontroversial. Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity! It…
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Worldly Success
Seek only as much worldly success as is necessary for the pursuit of unworldly ends. What the deeper natures want, this world cannot provide. It cannot offer ultimate satisfaction or true happiness. You say there is no ultimate satisfaction or true happiness? My point stands nonetheless. This world cannot supply them. To think otherwise is delusional.
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Letting Go of the Past
Since the past is no longer, to let go of the past is to let go of thoughts of the past. But these thoughts, like all thoughts, are in the present. So we are brought back again to the importance of cultivating the ability to let go of thoughts here and now. Mind control in…
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Be Gracious
Does someone want to do something for you? Buy you lunch? Give you a gift? Bring something to the dinner? Be gracious. Don't say, "You don't have to buy me lunch," or "Let me buy you lunch," or "You didn't have to bring that." Humbly accept and grant the donor the pleasure of being a…
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Forgive
Forgive lest ye be unforgiven.
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How To Be a Curmudgeon
The Constructive Curmudgeon waxes instructive: 1. Care about truth.2. Care about grammar.3. Care about eloquence in speaking. 4. Develop refined tastes in everything you can.5. Develop a masterful BS detector.6. Speak truths that no one else will, but which need to be heard.7. Never flatter.8. Don't sell character for success.9. Be skeptical of whatever "the…
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Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Homily
We need spiritual exercises just as we need physical, mental, and moral exercises. A good spiritual exercise, and easy to boot, is daily recollection of just how good one has it, just how rich and full one's life is, just how much is going right despite annoyances and setbacks which for the most part are…