Dear All,
Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year was announced this morning: BRAIN ROT
(n.) Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.
The great hope is that the online content in the Wisdom Works emails is a little more than trivial and unchallenging. A thought that crops up in a number of traditions including the Stoics is: Our life is what our thoughts make it. This suggests therefore if you want a trivial life go for trivial thought. If however you want something more out of life it might be good to attend to the less trivial things a little more.
I had a 93 year old woman attending one of my classes. She used to drive down from North London every week to the classes in Marylebone She had more life in her than people a quarter of her age. When she finally died apparently on her bed side table were the Essays of Montaigne. That’s what I call a life well lived, questing to the very end. No trivial thinking for her.
To give you a taste of what she was reading, here is just one quote from Montaigne’s essays: The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it.
This lady certainly gave life her full attention, and even in her last hours rose to the occasion.
All the best, William
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RISE TO THE OCCASION
When the circumstances are exceptional most of us are able to rise to the occasion. The fact that most of us dismiss most of our lives as unexceptional has the inevitable effect of making them unexceptional. The proximity of death awakens people to this fact, and they begin to treasure what they had previously neglected.
People are deeply concerned about neglect, but the most common form of neglect is self neglect. The kind I have in mind is not so much letting things run down physically, although this has its part to play, rather it's to do with neglecting the ultimate gift of life. Rather than doing this, become a gourmet of life, a real connoisseur. Look upon every occasion as an occasion to be risen to regardless of whether it's exceptional or mundane. The very fact that we dismiss things as mundane makes them mundane. The truth is that every moment is exceptional. There is no one like another, and in every moment there is a need to be met even if it is apparently a matter of not doing, no effort, of coming to stillness and opening ourselves to infinite possibility.
Listen Cézanne, not only a great painter but also a carrot revolutionary:
Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do this we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate.
Surely a single bunch of carrots painted naively just as we personally see it is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools of painting.
The day is coming when a single carrot freshly observed will set off a revolution.
Rise to the occasion. Rise to the moment. Open your eyes and see, allowing your dimension to follow your vision. Then rather than being satisfied with a moment's perception look again and continue to look. Return to this present moment, prepared always to meet whatever the moment is asking of you, and if the moment offers nothing seemingly great and glorious be happy with carrots. Recognise that every mundane thing has its own greatness, but only when freshly observed. We can only see afresh at the point of all freshness. Rise to the occasion at the time the occasion rises, now.
Practice:
Rise to the occasion at the time the occasion rises.
Don't dismiss anything as mundane.
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