Category: Sage Advice
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Food: Medicine, Drug, or Fuel?
In an excess of the ascetic, the author of The Confessions in Book Ten, Chapter 31 recommends taking food as medicine. At the opposite extreme we find those for whom it is a soporific, a sedative, an escape from reality, a drug. The wise tread the middle path: food is fuel. Eat in quantity and…
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Kerouac No Role Model
Lest I lead astray any young and impressionable readers, I am duty-bound to point out that my annual October focus on Kerouac is by no means to be taken as an endorsement of him as someone to be imitated. Far from it! He failed utterly to live up to the Christian precepts that he learned…
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Fake it and Make it
When we started out, did we know what we were doing? We do now. A bit of posturing and pretense may be needed to launch a life. Posture and pretense become performance. The untested ideal becomes the verified real. At the start of a life scant is the evidence that you can do what you…
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Care of Soul and Body
To care properly for the first, live each day as if it will be your last. To care properly for the second, live each day as if your supply of days is infinite. (Adapted from Evagrius Ponticus.) ………………………. The mortalist body-abuser is one puzzling hombre. Christopher Hitchens loved to drink and he loved to smoke…
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Stoic Advice
KNOW IN ADVANCE that people will respond to you in the most diverse ways, favorably, with hostility, indifferently, in every way. Do not be surprised or much affected. Take as much of it as you can with equanimity. Observe their antics with detachment. Observe as well your emotional responses. Treat feelings and emotions as they…
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Self-Admonitions
Arm yourself with your maxims as you quit your cell. They are as important as your EDC. The vexatious and worse are out and about. Avoid the near occasion of idle talk. Most of what anyone has to say is bushwa. Smile and greet, but pass on. Restrain the social need — if it is…
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Ingredients of Happiness
What makes for happiness? Acceptance is a good part of it: acceptance of self, of one's ineluctable limitations, of others and their limitations, of one's lot in life, of one's place in the natural hierarchy of prowess and intellect and spiritual capacity, acceptance of the inevitable in the world at large. Gratitude is another ingredient…
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Purgation of Memory and Purgatory of Memory
The manuals of mysticism enjoin the purgation of memory. But not all such purgation is good. Vexing memories of folly and excess, of time-wastage and wrong-doing, are an earthly purgatory which the purgation of memory, if it could be achieved, would eliminate. Prosecute the purgation of memory but not to the detriment of memory's purgatory.
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Memory: Content and Affect
The trick is to retain the content so that one can rehearse it if one wishes, but without re-enacting the affect, unless one wishes. Let me explain. Suppose one recalls a long-past insult to oneself, and feels anger in the present as a result. The anger is followed by regret at not having responded in…
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On Acquiring a Large Vocabulary
How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays. The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile…
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“Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother”
Honor your parents for what was honorable in them. As for the rest, forgive and forget, or at least forgive. Honor the honorable; forgive the rest.
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Happiness Maxims
Just over the transom: I do want to thank you again for the 'happiness maxims'. I've been reading them to wifey recently, and over time I've benefited hugely from them. Here they are again, easier to read, and slight emended. This is a re-post from 26 May 2013. ………………………………….. These maxims work for me; they…
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Pearls before Swine
Beware of casting them. Beware also of the conceit that one has them to cast.
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The Art of Life: Among ‘Regular Guys’
Among regular guys it is best to play the regular guy — as tiring and boring as that can be. Need relief? Strictly limit your time among regular guys. But mix with them a little lest you be hated for being 'aloof,' or 'unfriendly.' As long as one is in the world, one must be…
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Without Affect
Try to absorb criticism without affect, attending only to its merits or demerits.