Pleasure in Private

Hi Reader.

Completely fogged-in this morning. A total white-out out there. It’s so cool. Ghostly, foggy, but not quiet. The birdsongs seem to be almost amplified when you can’t see anything.

I’m reading Seneca’s Letters on Ethics which turns out to be pretty entertaining:
”Envy you will escape if you don’t force yourself on people’s attention, if you don’t brag about your possessions, and if you learn to take pleasure in private.”

Funny how envy seems to have become the goal, ever since the advent of sharing all manner of our private lives in a very public way: here is my dog, here is my living room, here is my table that is set for company. Here is my new haircut, here is my family on vacation, here is my bloodied arm after my injury.

Here is what I think. Here is what I think is funny. Here is something clever that someone said, here is a recipe for toothpaste, here is my view.

It’s fascinating how we dish up pretty much everything in what feels almost like a quest for other people’s envy.

Seems like things got a little turned upside down somewhere along the line, sorry about that Mr. Seneca.

Here’s another good one: “No one is pursued by business. It’s people themselves who go after it and regard being busy as proof that they are well off.”

To think that was written two thousand years before the invention of email.

We’re busy, that’s for sure. But don’t get too worked up about it because there are at least six hundred—in truth I’m making that number up, I’m afraid to look to see how many people are writing on this platform these days—articles right here at Substack telling you it’s OK to just go for a walk or stare out your window or cut your toenails.

So phew because I was getting worried that all the digging in dirt and watching my kids toss a football I’ve been doing lately would mark me as a slacker, capital S, the modern day Scarlet Letter.

Sometimes I daydream of a complete retreat from any kind of public presence. Not because I feel overwhelmed or anything like that, mostly because I don’t feel like what I say or do is all that interesting or that anyone actually needs to hear it or know about it. But I guess I’m mostly with Seneca when he confessed that “The right path that I myself discovered late in life when weary from wandering, I now point out to others.”

I can hear the heavy sigh that came with the delivery of that line.

I will admit I was intrigued when, after hearing me talk about the power of your thoughts to shape your lived experience, my son Sam said that no one had ever mentioned this juicy tidbit to him in his twenty-eight years on planet Earth.

Funny how so much of what we’re taught in school has so very little relevance to lived life.

What we’re taught and told, in general, methinks.

Here, let me show you something.

Here we have my two sons from my first marriage, my daughter from my second marriage and my first husband’s kids from his third marriage. They are good friends.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you have to hate your former spouse or partner.

Don’t enter into marriage thinking it’s gonna last forever; it hardly ever does and that’s OK.

You don’t have to go to college and you don’t have to get married and have kids. You don’t have to go to church to find holy things, they’re everywhere. People with gobs of money are as anxious as people with hardly any. Death is not that big a deal, in the long-range scheme of things.

Most of the rules you encounter in life have to do with other people’s fears and need to try to control the situation. Politely sidestep them and do it the way that makes sense for you. Life is not a tragedy, it is very, very funny, punctuated by lots of things that are sad. If you learn to control your mind you will have everything you ever need to be content.

The right path of Seneca’s late-life discovery is the one you craft for yourself, once you have pried your life from the pile of bullshit everyone else has told you is true or right or necessary.

The fog has lifted, the wind has picked up and for the first time in days the air is cool here. I apologize for having forced myself on your attention today, but I’m grateful for you and the time you choose to spend here with me.

xomo