Speaker 1Hello, everybody. How are you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome to another lecture today. We're going to be talking about living in the moment. It's going to be another episode of guided philosophical meditation. And I actually want to start today off with an exercise. So what this first episode is going to do, hopefully, we'll get it situated in regards to how we generally relate to time. So where are we thinking? Where are we spending most of our time and most of our feeling in the present, the past, or the future? So the first exercise, I'm going to ask that you break it down into percentages, right? So take a moment, as I always suggest, right? Pen, paper, and hands are a good idea with these. And ask yourself the following, right? Or fill in the blanks for the following. I usually think about the past, blank percentage of my time, the present, blank percentage, and the future, blank percentage of my time. And we break it down into percentages. Again, it doesn't have to, obviously, you know, it won't be exact. But the idea is to see if we're leaning too heavily into thoughts of the future, too heavily into thoughts of the past, and how, of course, you know, are we really engaging with life? Are we actually ever living in the moment, right? And to what degree are we? So try to think in numbers there. I'm not great with numbers, but I think this is a pretty good exercise. And then, of course, we don't want to just get, all right, I'm 40% in the future. We want to characterize this thinking and this feeling, right? So take a minute with each of these, right? The past, the present, and the future. And what percentage of that thinking is positive? And what percentage of that thinking is positive? And then, of course, what percent of the thinking might be negative? And then take time with those ideas, right? Locate the narratives. Characterize them. Think about how on a daily basis are you positively engaging with the day? Or again, are you negatively engaging with that day's tasks and that day's experiences? So we need to do both, I think, right? We have to figure out where we stand generally, and then we have to figure out and characterize in greater detail the positivity. The positivity, the negativity. We could even also think about the truthfulness of the narratives we perpetuate, the usefulness of the narratives we are perpetuating, right? Yeah, spend a few minutes with that exercise. I think it might be really useful. And then for today's bibliotherapy, I'm just going to share a few brief quotes, again, from Marcus Aurelius that I think will encourage us to sort of bring our gaze more towards the present, because I think it's likely the case that the majority of our thinking is not negative. On the present, right? I think that's commonly, I've done this before a lot of students. I know my thinking is not on a daily basis majority of the time about the present, and it's something that I've really actually been working on, right? And by the present, let's conceive of it in the following way, right? Not like mathematically, because the present moment obviously is so like unbelievably short that it's almost not even worth considering, although it is a mathematical reality, right? We're thinking more about consciousness, right? Any more consciousness, we even put it in sense for a moment of just philosophy as a way of life. Let's talk about today. Let's talk about this hour. Let's talk about this minute, right? So on that note, I'm somebody who struggles primarily, I think too much about the future. The past, I don't think about all that much. Honestly, I think about the past probably too little, but I think a healthy way to relate to the past would be asking ourselves what we can learn from the past. And I think for me, what I've been noticing too is because I have a tendency to not think about the past, I've allowed certain, let's say modes of thinking, especially, that aren't good. I've allowed them to repeat themselves because I haven't sat down and really thought about it. So why do I keep returning to this? Turns out as I've been doing it now a little more recently, there's just some stuff from my past that I have to go through, right? I have to leave it where it was. I shouldn't carry it with me anymore, right? So I had to turn my gaze to the past in a more detailed and goal-oriented way, right? Instead of just avoiding it, I have to realize, well, the reason why I'm annoyed today by this is not because this is actually annoying, but because X, Y, or Z happened and I haven't processed it. Or whatever, right? So these are useful conversations that are going to, I think, hopefully help us lead healthier, happier, more fulfilling lives, right? It's very important to try to live in the moment correctly. Again, carrying good lessons from the past to act in the future with some sense of knowledge towards, I'm sorry, to act in the present with some sense of knowledge of self and world. And then also doing so such that our future, you know, we're moving towards a good future. Again, again, I think it's really important for us to be Anxiety, we've talked about a little bit. That's a future-driven pathology, right? So how can we maybe avoid some anxiety? Well, if you're thinking about the future 80% of the time, 70% of the time, maybe we can just work to decrease the sheer quantity of the thinking first, and then we can focus on the quality of the thinking, right? So that first exercise, and that's a good way of understanding it, I think. Think about both the quantity and the quality, and see what's easier to change first, and then hopefully kind of get the ball rolling in that direction, right, of positive change. So on that note, I want to share a few quotes here again from Marcus Aurelius's meditations that I think might be helpful in this general first opening philosophical meditation on living in the moment. So first one, remember that no one lives more than this infinitesimal point of time, the present. The rest of their days are either lived out or hidden from them. Can't get the past back. The future is uncertain. Try to focus now. Keep it simple, right? Or a simple interpretation of that. Next one, confine yourself to the present. Put an end to the wire pulling of passion. So I think this is also interesting because our thoughts of the future and the past, I think, might have a tendency, or again, maybe this is just me, but I don't think I'm alone here, to kind of influence us, right? To influence us, and I like the idea of pulling, right? Like you're pulled to the past, you're pulled to the future in your thinking. Well, if we combine these two quotes, right, you only live now. It's impossible to live tomorrow right now. It's impossible to live yesterday right now. So when we confine ourselves, we might kind of shift our consciousness and ask, well, what's happening right now? What can I do right now? What should I do right now? Right? We shouldn't maybe be as bothered as we are about, about the uncertainties of the future because it's always going to be there. The future will always be uncertain. So when we constantly confront that idea with excessive fear instead of confidence, we're training ourselves to be anxious because the nature of the future will never change. As he's saying, it's hidden. That's how it's going to stay, the nature of what the situation is, right? So I think he's reminding himself, again, in his meditations, he's writing for himself to remain grounded in the moment because of the unchangeable nature of the past and the unpredictable nature of the future. Okay. It's almost inherent or natural that if we forget to live in the moment to remind ourselves, let's focus on today, let's focus on this hour, let's focus on this specific task, this person, as Epictetus will share later in another episode, right? Immerse yourself in this task. If we forget to do that, it's almost natural that we're going to start being anxious or stressed or fearful. A couple more here. All you need are these: certainty in the present moment, action for the common good in the present moment, and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way. So attitude of gratitude, this is a practice I think we may have talked about this already. If not, it'll definitely come up, right? Maybe introducing a self-writing gratitude practice could be really good. I've done that. It was helpful for me, right? Making sure that you're saying the word thank you to people, making sure to an extent that you thank yourself for doing a good job, right? Attitude of gratitude, welcoming, right? Gratitude to the universe, maybe if you're a person of faith to a higher power, gratitude to others, right? These are all really powerful ways to cultivate desire for the moment. You're grateful for what you have, right? You can't be grateful for what you want necessarily, right? You could obviously be grateful that you have a desire, maybe if it's a healthy desire, that's good, but that's not what I mean by that, right? When we want, usually, I think that almost, once again, inevitably, relatively quickly, it leads us into feeling like we're lacking in life. Gratitude doesn't make us feel like we lack. It makes us feel full, right? It's pretty much desire for the present, what is. Action for the common good. This is really helpful for me. I think when I'm getting stressed or anxious, sometimes I'll just try to do something nice for someone. It could be something as simple as a text or I'll work on something for this, for teaching that I'm hoping is going to be useful. That gets me out of my head, right? That gets me out of the feelings of fearing in the future or worrying about the future. Or worrying about, or let's say being stressed about the past. And I think the reason for that is, once again, it's action and it's action with a purpose. And it's a purpose that's larger than your own feelings, right? The common good implies not just you. So I think that's great. And of course, as an emperor, he wanted to encourage that in himself, right? He was governing an empire, but we're all governing our own lives and we're all impacting people. So we should consider that, right? That's a great antidote, I think. And the last one, certainty in the present moment. I'm not sure how to interpret that. I think, you know, certainty is kind of elusive in general, but to confront the present moment in an attempt to know more about it, to move, like I say, towards certainty is also a way to ground ourselves, right? So for example, being observant of the sights, the smells, the sounds of where you are right now, calling that to your attention. Well, once again, draw your attention away from thoughts of the future. Draw your attention away. You're not going to be able to get away from the pulling from thoughts of the past or thoughts of the future. So really, I think the idea of certainty in the present moment for me would be more so like pursuing knowledge of what's going on right now, right, to ground yourself, feel your feet on the floor, right, feel the wind from the window, whatever it might be, but almost like grounding that idea of pursuing certainty in the senses, I think, can be a really nice way also to live in the moment, right? It's like when you're eating really good food, it smells good, like you're really engaged, right? You're noticing stuff. We can train ourselves, and we should, I think, to more regularly just notice what's going on around us. And in so doing, again, we're occupied, and that's a good thing. And then the final one for today, everywhere and at all times, it is up to you to rejoice piously at what is occurring at the present moment, to conduct yourself with justice towards the people who are present. So I think that's, again, sort of similar to the last one, right, was the idea of common good. If we gave more attention to rejoicing piously at what's occurring, right, again, back to gratitude a little bit, right, celebrating this thing. And for the Stoics, this is what I'm about to do now is a little bit of a superficial comment on this, which is a huge idea for them, right? I even just forget the Stoics for a second. If you believe in fate in any way, right, maybe you believe in, as we talked about in other episodes, if you're listening in my class, right, like the idea of everything is predetermined, maybe you believe in that, maybe you believe in the co-creator model, right, where there is a higher power, you know, where there even, let's say, switch that up a little bit, we're not totally autonomous, but we can exert some free will, some autonomy in our thinking, feeling, and acting still, right? And then maybe you think we're totally free. So all parts of the spectrum here. Nonetheless, it is what it is. Here we are. You've arrived at this point. So to rejoice piously at being where you are, regardless of whether or not you think a higher power was responsible or whether you're totally responsible or, you know, neurons firing and brain chemicals, I just said brain chemicals, chemicals in your brain are responsible, whatever. It is what it is. Here we are. How do we relate to this fact? Well, let's rejoice, right? Even if it's not something we want, we're still alive. We're still here, right? Not to make a Sisyphus reference, but it's still rolling. But let's confront this moment by rejoicing and by making sure we treat others justly, right? So pursuing these virtues, I think one only happens in the moment because once again, the only time we could do anything is in this moment. We can't live in the future, can't live in the past. And for Marcus, I think he's saying, and we're going to confront this, I think, nicely when we get into some other thoughts from him. I'm living in the moment. Those priorities to treat others justly, to be of service to the common good, to engage with like the fullness of the moment with gratitude, right? And working on cultivating a healthy inner disposition, right? So working to, again, not succumb to negative emotions, right? That actually does make us feel full. The moment, as he would say, is enough, right? So maybe go back to exercise for a little bit, check your percentages and see where these quotes might be helpful, right? And we'll have some longer lectures on living in the moment. But I do think this first episode of just getting a handle on where your thinking is most of the time is super helpful, right? It'll start hopefully a conversation that'll be meaningful for you about how we can maybe drag a little more of our attention to the moment. And just one other brief note for me, I think I'm really doing my best and I'm feeling my best when I'm focusing on the day, right? I think it's really important and I think it's healthy to have a general vision of the future. That's very healthy. And as I said, I'm doing this recently where I'm kind of going back into some memories and seeing what's what in regards to the starting points for some of my thinking habits. That's a useful exercise too. Ultimately though, I think I'm at my best when I'm focusing on a task like this, right? So I try to populate my day with tasks that really require my attention, that are of service to others, that allow me to sharpen my skills and fully engage, right? So focusing on the day is also a good way to sort of conceptualize what I think a lot of the next few episodes will encourage us to do. So hope this is helpful. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Hello, everybody. How you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome to another lecture. Today, we're going to be focusing on living in the moment. So before this, I hope you took a look and a listen to the philosophical meditation where I walk through some questions, some exercises, and a few quotes to kind of help us engage with ourselves in regards to how we live in the moment, how we live in the future, how we live in the past. By that, of course, I mean in our thinking, because one major theme we're going to talk about in this episode, which I think sort of sets us up for some following episodes that get a little more into practices and principles specifically about how we can and why we should live in the moment. We only live in the moment, right? So what we're doing today is we're going to be thinking about living the moment from a general perspective in modern times and how basically we've always struggled with living in the moment. We have evidence of this from ancient times and poems, and I think a lot of ancient philosophy, some of which we're going to discuss throughout these episodes, really encourage us to live in the moment. And I often wonder, we can't assume that just because there's a lot of ancient philosophy on it that people were good at it, right? I think a lot of philosophy too, as we've said, hopefully, and hopefully as I've made clear with these episodes, was there to heal people, was there to help the philosopher themselves and also for the philosopher to be useful to society. So if a lot of writing is about living in the moment, I would argue it's likely the case that it was difficult back then too. So we could argue a lot on, you know, has it gotten better or worse? We're going to see a couple of points made by Pierre Hadot. Today, we're going to be looking mostly at Pierre Hadot's great book, Philosophy as a Way of Life, which speaks to these ancient traditions and also talks a little bit about a kind of our modern world and our understanding of these issues as well. So that being said, just to make it very clear, we only live in the now, right? And that's a very significant point to just, at the onset of these discussions, really consider, right? Tomorrow in a literal sense does not exist. We cannot go back in time either. So we have to situate ourselves in a conversation about living in the moment with that in mind, right? I think that might even be helpful to a large extent, in addition to the other, let's say, ideas and practices that we're going to confront over the next couple episodes, right? So that being said, I want to jump right into a little bit of reading from Hadot that I think might be useful in characterizing our modern, let's say, tendency to not live in the moment, right? So this is once again from Philosophy as a Way of Life. And he tells us, quote, he's talking about the spiritual tradition of ancient philosophy here, right? So that's what the book is, the first word here. It was not in order to satisfy some historical or literary curiosity, that is, again, the discussion he's provided in the book so far of ancient philosophical traditions, but to describe a spiritual attitude, an attitude which for ourselves and for modern people in general, as we are hypnotized by language, images, information, and the myth of the future, right? So even that line right there, he's giving us, I think, a really interesting set of almost like he's diagnosing us there, right? As hypnotized by these things. Very compelling. So we could argue even, you know, we're flooded with information now. We're flooded with images. Just think about our phones, right? And then the key for today's discussion might be this last one he mentions, right? The myth of the future. I love that idea, the myth. As I just said, it doesn't exist. And as I think we're going to unpack and learn, at no point am I suggesting to never think about the future. I don't think that's even what the ancients were saying, nor do I think that's good advice, right? Obviously, too, we want to think about the past. We're blessed with memory. We're blessed with imagination. That being said, we have to make sure we don't turn these blessings into burdens, right? So he goes on here a couple lines after that. The call of Socrates speaks to us more now than ever before. Take care for yourself, right? So why bother with philosophy? Why bother with the meditations? Why bother with bibliotherapy with this approach? Well, we're learning about ourselves so we take care of ourselves and we can then serve others. Again, as a sort of process we're engaging in here, right? And then he says, this call is echoed by Nietzsche's remark. Is it not the case that all human institutions, and then Hadot says, to which we might add, back to Nietzsche, as well as the whole of modern life, are intended to prevent people from feeling their life by means of the constant dispersion of their thoughts? So I just want to use, just to quickly elaborate on this, I want to use school in our modern conception, and a number of you listening are my students. Well, hopefully you're listening for my students when I sign this. The modern conception of school is a lot different than what it was in the ancient world, right? So the words school comes from skole, which basically translates to, or at least a part of the definition involves this idea of a suspension, right? So school is supposed to be a time when you're kind of suspended from having to let's say, at least in this conception of it, all the problems or all of the challenges and On the other side of that, all of the benefits that might come with life after school, right? So that idea of school being a suspension really, I think, goes against our modern understanding of it where school, I think, unfortunately often is viewed as simply a stepping stone to getting a job, right? And getting a job is important. I think having a vocation should be a reflection of who you are as a person, right? So just to quickly, that idea of vocation exists at the crossroads, at the intersection point between personal fulfillment and service, right? So you feel fulfilled personally, and you also feel like you're doing something useful and meaningful for society. So that's a beautiful idea, right? And I even think, to an extent, let's say the differences we draw between work and other parts of life shouldn't exist, right? We should try to have synergy there. That being said, I think this idea of school or scolay as a suspension is interesting, right? How often in school do you just feel like you're doing this to get a job? Or the idea even of taking a course that is outside of your major as something that is simply a requirement that isn't going to be meaningful, right? So we may be, I think, to Nietzsche's point, we're talking about institutions here, modern institutions, schools and institutions, of course, right, of society. We need, or I mean, I think we should, I'm not going to even ask that, like it's a rhetorical question, right? We need to integrate times. We need to integrate times in school that are suspensions from the demands of the rest of society, right? So that's what I meant by this idea of suspending other concerns that might typically be associated with our lives after schooling, right? If everything is linked to something in the future, that is the job, what have you, right, the paychecks, whatever, of course we have to serve that, definitely, 100%. I'm not denying that that's important. What I'm saying is we also need to make time for some suspensions of those concerns. Why? Because that's when we can really take time to care for ourselves, right? And when you look at the myriad of problems in our society, right, I think at least some of them, we could talk about rampant anxiety, rampant depression, rampant loneliness, right? Some of them could be aided by making time for suspensions, right? Suspensions of what? Once again. Suspensions of these future-driven narratives about things that we don't care about. Right? About things that are not actually what we're doing. Right? You're writing an essay for this class and hopefully that activity in and of itself grounds you in the moment because it's engaging. And yet you might pause and really be paralyzed on writing the first sentence because of some anxiety that involves something down the road in the future, right? Whether it's the grade and the grade precipitates or the grade in the paper then affects the grade in the class and that affects you graduating and you graduating and here we go, right? 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Fulfillment involves pain, involves struggle, involves happiness, involves joy, right? It's a bigger idea. So again, when we live in the moment with our suffering, that's meaningful. We shouldn't ignore it. When we live in the moment with others and try to sympathize with them and provide, you know, consolation and be compassionate and try to be empathetic, right? And try to offer them something positive, truly to be with them in the moment, right? We have to train that skill. So I think when we think about our modern world too, right? We could all, you know, hopefully we're not that person, although I'm sure we're all, myself included, guilty of this, right? Somebody's talking to you when you're on your phone. Simple example, but it warrants mentioning because it happens a lot. You'll be at a table with everybody and, you know, half the time they're on their phones. What am I doing here, right? So how do we grapple with that? Because that's not a joke, right? We're literally addicted to our phones. They're designed that way. Very smart, right? So how do we not, again, got to live in the world, right? So, okay, maybe we keep the phones, sure. But how do we have healthy relationships to these things that might be pulling our attention away from this moment, away from this person who's talking to us, away from this task that we want to complete? How do we work to create a sense of balance in our modern world that might be even more, let's say, ardently, pulling our attention from the moment than in antiquity, just for argument's sake, right? But again, I think Hadell's drawing an interesting parallel here that, look, everyone's been struggling with this pretty much forever. 2,000 years ago, people were having similar conversations. And philosophers took that very seriously because, again, life only happens now. You miss gratitude if you're busy wanting what's supposed to be a year from now. And we're going to talk about the nature of the future. It's unpredictable. It's the nature of the past, right? You can't change it. It's in death's hands, as Seneca would say. How can we not be tortured by these things, but instead be empowered by them? That is to say, our relationship to the past, our relationship to the future. Right? And even for me, on a very sort of philosophical and personal note, I find that I am the most productive and the most sort of, again, I pursue eudaimonia. And even I would say I'm happy. I'm the happiest person in the world. I'm the happiest person in the world. I'm the happiest person in the world. And I take it one day at a time. So one of our other episodes is a great essay called, you know, Taking It One Day at a Time. I do a little lecture on that. But Hadot, I think, here is alerting us to some really great points. We've always had trouble with this, right? We've always had trouble living in the moment. We've always had trouble, as other essays have highlighted, with coping. You know, we're always going to be anxious. It's a part of being a person. Well, again, where does anxiety live? In the future. So here we are, once again, returning to these ideas of kind of questioning or hopefully cultivating a greater understanding of normalcy of these things. If it's been happening for 2,000 years, right, as Hadot was highlighting here, we're part of a larger conversation, which I actually think is encouraging, right? We have more resources if we open ourselves up to the idea that they're there, that we can maybe use to lead a better life, right? It's a huge part of this class, right? Philosophy is this, you know, collected wisdom that we can all use, hopefully. Let's keep all this in mind. And also, think about how our modern world might be especially set up to prevent us from living in the moment. Again, the moment is where everything is. The growth, the happiness, the suffering, whatever it is, we should learn to address the moment such that we take sound, rational, just actions, we feel fulfilled, and we're moving towards a better future. And so, I think it's important to think about that. And I think it's a valued purpose. And by valued, I mean something that we value and something that also will add positive value to the world. So, I hope this was helpful. Again, a general opening conversation about some conceptions in regards to living in the moment. I will talk to you soon. Thank you for listening. Hello, everybody. How are you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome to another episode. Today, we're talking about living in the moment. So, the main thing we're going to be referencing today, in addition to a couple other sources, will be an essay from the School of Life's The Book of Life. So, the School of Life, The Book of Life are available online. Great resources. I have not read or seen all of their articles and YouTube videos, but I have a few books. I've enjoyed them. I've read a bunch of articles, watched a bunch of videos, and I would generally say this is a very good resource. So, the essay we're looking at today is called Taking It One Day at a Time. So, I want to share a few excerpts from this in addition to some other reflections and hopefully some practices we can create around this idea, right? So, one thing that I'll ask us to think about immediately or initially is what percentage of your time do you spend thinking about the past? What percentage of your time do you spend thinking of the present? And what percentage of your time do you spend thinking about the future? So, try to get some honest numbers there, and then take a minute or two to write about each of those things, right? And talk about the quality of the thoughts, the intensity of the thoughts, right? And I asked to think about what percentage is because I think it's normal and healthy to think about all three, right? I would never suggest that you live the entirety of your life only in the moment, right? As much as I think a lot of what we'll talk about today and other episodes will be about how to live in the moment, how to, you know, appreciate the day. That's really important, but I don't want to ever have you think I'm saying to not plan for the future or to not learn from the past. We need to do those things, right? We're blessed as humans with powerful memories, and we're blessed as humans to think about the future, but those things can also become curses. So, we have to learn how to interact with them, how we can control these thoughts, and make sure they're productive and healthy and true, right? So, that being said, take a minute with that exercise of the percentages thing, and let's get started with this essay, right? So, a couple points in the essay that I initially want to raise are the notions that really most of what we want to achieve in life takes a while. So, I think initially, one might think, all right, well, then I have to be patient, and that's true, right? But for those of us who are not patient, I'm not patient at all. I think working to live in the moment and take it one day at a time and find meaning on a daily basis and create meaning on a daily basis is actually sort of a way of being patient without being patient, right? And that sounds maybe a little bit weird, but that's how I look at this essay. This essay is a pathway to leading a more fulfilling life such that you have to consciously think less about being patient. So, the School of Life opens up the essay with some meditations on the fact that getting a degree, for example, writing a novel, having enough money to buy a house, finding a new career, all these things really, if you kind of start out your day hoping you're going to move towards these things, the odds of them happening by that evening or even that week or that month or that year even, not great, right? So, we have to learn how to grapple with this. We have this capacity as humans to see into the future, to have these great goals and visions, and then we have the ability to let those things torture us because we don't take it one day at a time. So, one, let's acknowledge that a lot of the good things that we'll have in life, hopefully, that we'll strive for, that are good things to have in our minds, right, aren't going to happen soon. And not only that, but it's okay, right? So, we can see these hopes and we could, once again, have a healthy relationship to them, which is what this essay, I think, among other things, talks about. So, we'll get to that in a minute. Or we can allow them to make us feel bad about what we're doing today. So, for those of us who are bad at taking it one day at a time, it might likely be the case that we have some hopes and dreams that take us out of our present day, or at the very least, take us out of enjoying our present day, having a productive, meaningful day, because we're not there yet. So, another quick exercise, right? Write down your long-term goals or your vision for your long-term life, like three to five years from now, whatever, and try to locate the things that make you nervous is another way to maybe look at that, right? So, for me, in all honesty, I'm always kind of a little bit stressed out about the long-term stability in academia, right? So, one of my goals is to become a full-time professor, but I really don't want to leave New York. I would say I could stay in New York, New Jersey. I could do Jersey, but I really have to be close to the bridge, though. I can't be too far away from my family or my barber. Those are my goals. So, for me, I would like to stay close, and that really limits my options, in all honesty. A lot of my colleagues at school finish up their doctorate. They go across the country to find work. I just can't do that, mainly, again, for family and barber reasons. So, for me, I get nervous about that, right? And that'll be a long-term hope that, one, it's not even certain. There's so many uncertainties there. I didn't even finish my doctorate yet, which is also an uncertainty. I'm not going to think out loud about this right now. But the bottom line is that'll sort I found that after reading this essay, after teaching it, it was helpful, one. So, keep listening. And two, when I really list that, right, because that's an intensely felt hope. I really would love to do that for a living, okay? It's not going to happen for at least another year until I finish my doctorate. Then, when I finish at a year, who knows, right? So, my question to myself has to become, in my opinion, as per this essay, all right, so how can I, on a daily basis, or improve my chances of getting a job locally right so i can try to teach very well locally i can work at more than one institution which i do locally i can network at these institutions i'm not good at that i have to get better at that um i can write more i can publish so these are all things that on a daily basis um can sort of fuel a greater sense of calm in regards to these long this long-term hope right but it's definitely one if i had to list my stressors about long-term hopes and dreams whatever that would be one that definitely is not happening in the near near future that might not even happen in long-term future last thing i'm going to say about it um that will be that would be on my mind right so all that i can do in the face of that long-term uncertain hope is to take it one day at a time if i want to be feeling like my life is fulfilling and enjoy you know and enjoy things now on the other side of that i can adopt the mentality of constantly hoping and then when we hope and then we wake up the next day and nothing changes we become unhappy right so we have to confront our hopes honestly and understand that excessive amounts of hope especially excessive amounts of hope that do not translate into action right and action can only happen in the moment and sound effective action is only occurring when we're really focused on what we're doing right which also requires a different type of consciousness than one that's distracted with thoughts of the future or pushed and pulled by hopes especially in the face of uncertainty right so before we move even further into this essay which now we're just getting this initial i think great point on look a lot of stuff we're hoping for isn't happening today or tomorrow anyway and that could torture us right it's a great quote from nikos kazanzakis um i hope for nothing i fear nothing i am free so if we're hoping for something that might lead us down into a path of fear right because then it's like well i hope i get it but if i don't then all of a sudden you're afraid of it not happening right and i think i am free you know it's like i'm free from being tortured by hope and fear i'm so living in the moment i'm so allowing myself to be full by what is occurring at this very moment this is enough for me to enjoy speaking right now the the coffee i had before this the music i'm listening to as i'm speaking right i need to work on turning my gaze to the moment and not in a hopeful way saying i'll be happy when i get the job for my example or i'll be happy when i meet the right person or i'll be happy when i get the house or when wait a minute we can shift our consciousness by taking it one day at a time what can this moment offer me what can i make right now now what can today be what can i learn today what can i add to the world today these are better questions right so i think god's adzakis who also wrote which i'm reading this now so i can't fully recommend it yet because i haven't finished it but zorba the greek great book and the main character zorba kind of lives like this he's very much in the moment he'll just really enjoy a piece of fruit he'll really enjoy a conversation he'll enjoy playing his instrument and he does things on his own terms right so a lot more to be said about that book but just right now i mean really enjoying things is something that we'll also see come up in this essay that i think is a powerful antidote to having our attention and our emotions and thinking drawn to the future when it shouldn't be right so the next thing the essay presents to us is the idea of like okay so maybe we have a tendency to be tortured by our hopes for the future that aren't happening all that soon right we're angry we aren't there yet we're uncertain and afraid that it won't happen we're hoping and that leads to fear okay well when do we live in the moment and unfortunately as as per the essay and i think i agree with this um we only really live in the moment when things are going wrong when there's some type of tragedy happening right and someone asks us how things are going we're more likely to say we're taking it one day at a time right or when someone's elderly the example in the essay i think is great here too they'll say that they're taking it one day at a time and this reminds me of my grandmother who thank god she's a good person she's a good person she's a good person she's a good person who thank god knock on wood is very healthy um who's in her upper 80s now and she'll say like every day is a gift and that's a beautiful way to live right one of the topics we'll talk about um on this podcast is the stoic idea of memento mori right so when you remind yourself that you're not here forever the days kind of take on a different energy they start feeling like gifts right because when we get older of course you know it's tough to talk about but things inherently get more uncertain in terms if we wake up the next day so the idea that it's a gift just to wake up of course that makes life more meaningful right so the essay is pointing to that i think in a really nice way memento more there's a lot of reasons for that again we'll get to more as we encounter different topics we might even have a whole episode on memento more why memento more but this i think strikes strikes that sort of um that energy if you will right we're taking it one day at a time implies almost memento mori for me in a way so here we are right those are scenarios how are things going in this rough aspect of your life right for example maybe you sustained some kind of injury right i was taking one day at a time with the recovery right so why not adopt this mentality when we're let's say healthy and when things are going seemingly very well and we're youthful okay though scenarios that the essay talks about, of again, maybe some extreme scenarios, or again, just being elderly, there is valuable teaching there for anyone with a tendency to ignore their own advantages. That is for all of us. One day at a time thinking reminds us that in many cases, our greatest enemy is that otherwise critical nectar, hope, and the perplexing emotion it tends to bring with it, impatience. By limiting our horizons to tonight, we are girding ourselves for the long haul and remembering that an improvement may best be achieved when we manage not to await it too ardently. That lesson is to me is very meaningful and also connects to an interesting practice, right? If you're anyone, or if you're someone who keeps journals at all, right, I'm hoping to encourage that we do that a little bit as a result of our work together, as a result of listening to this podcast, right? Self-writing has a hugely philosophical basis, right? And we look back to ancient schools of philosophy, they were huge on self-writing. Self-writing in the morning, in the middle of the day, at night, ways of keeping ourselves accountable, ways of creating positive intentions, ways of creating gratitude, ways of getting shit out of our heads so we can examine it more clearly. I mean, there's a lot of richness there, right? One of the coolest experiences for me is I keep a lot of my self-writing journals, and I would discover these lists of things I wanted to do in journals that I wrote a year ago. I would write them down and forget about it. And then sometimes if I'm just cleaning up my apartment or whatever, or I'll find a bunch of just scratch paper with ideas on them. And I'm like, oh, I forgot about this, and it ended up happening anyway, right? Because I think there's power in sitting down, writing about a vision or a goal so authentically that you don't have to visit it that often. You just start living it. And then you live it one day at a time, small tasks, small progress, and then it happens, and then you kind of just bump into the idea again. And that, again, sort of made me think of this, so busy hoping. The word ardently is important here, right? It's like, if we're so focused, so intense on this goal, especially one that, again, is going to take a while, it blinds us. It blinds us and prevents us from seeing the joy in doing the small tasks. So we don't want to do that. Right? Hope, if it's excessive, gets in the way of enjoying the moment, because hope also implies a deficit, right? Wishing implies there's something now that I'm not, well, there's something now that's missing. We don't want to always feel like that. Right? So we want to fight that urge. Okay? We want to ward that off a little bit. I focus on steadfastness, right? So every day, day in, day out, doing the small things that are required of these larger goals and enjoying them. Right? Taking it, this is back to the essay for a minute. Taking it day by day means reducing the degree of control we expect to be able to bring to bear on the uncertain future. It means recognizing that we have no serious capacity to exercise our will on a span of years and should not therefore disdain a chance to secure one or two minor wins in the hours ahead of us. That's the key right there. That's what I was talking about a moment ago with the large goal will blind us to the importance and the potential meaning and joy and fulfillment we could get out of the small ones. We need small wins. This is also why self-righting is so important in any context. Right? And I use one example here that I think works nicely. You want to get in better shape, right? It takes a while just for argument's sake to lose 10 pounds. It's going to take a while. So why not let yourself feel good about eating a healthy breakfast and writing it down? Why not let yourself feel good about working out three times that week? And not only that, but write down how you worked out and then see, like compete with yourself. See how the next time you can improve. You have evidence here, right? That's a minor win, but it's something we should celebrate. Okay. And on that note, back to the essay, we should, from a new perspective, conduct ourselves and I'm sorry, count ourselves immensely grateful if by nightfall there have been no no further arguments, no more seizures, if the rain has let off and we have found one or two interesting pages to read. So there's no catastrophe and we've learned a little bit. We've grown a little bit. Maybe we've challenged ourselves a little bit. We need ways to check in on that development. Once again, back to a self-writing practice. And maybe that's not something we're considering now, although I think we should be. Either way, I think shifting our gaze and trying to live life like this could also just be very helpful in and of itself, right? Even if we don't accompany it with a writing practice. What's the smallest win I could get today is a really good question. And I'm feeling good about that and doing that day in, day out, right? There's a book called Atomic Habits that I'm also kind of reading right now. And a great quote from that is, we don't rise to our goals, we fall to our systems. So those are the daily habits. The goal is relevant because I think it could pull us forward, but it really isn't that relevant because goals don't happen unless we have systems, which is to say habits, in place that get us towards the goal. And we should love those systems. We should create joy around those systems one day at a time, right? As life as a whole grows more complicated, we can remember to unclench and smile a little along the way. That's feeling good about the small wins, right? Instead of, again, yearning for this finale or this moment, right? That once again, we'll just pass because that's what all moments do. We can turn a different type of gaze to our day. Ask new questions like some of those I mentioned earlier. Okay, we can stoop to accept with fresh gratitude a few of the minor gifts that are already within our grasp. This is a great reference, I think, maybe to Marcus Aurelius, right? Who in his meditations encourages himself to dig within himself, right? He literally, again, in his meditations, he's writing for himself. Never think about it. He's writing for himself. He's writing for himself. He's writing for himself. He's telling himself, dig within yourself. Look internally. Within that process, within you, through that process, there are gifts to be found. There's strength to be found. Don't look for the external achievement. Again, like we said earlier, buying the house, getting the degree. Find that there's achievements to be sort of celebrated today with the small tasks that you have greater control over. And this idea, too, is beautiful. We might look with fresh ness, right? We want to encourage that, to notice things. Take a minute right now. This is great. I don't know if we have any Pablo Neruda fans, but he was huge on writing odes, right? So in order to confront, and we're going to talk about Van Gogh in a minute doing this, to confront the things that we may be ignoring, write an ode, a short poem, to something you use every day and appreciate it gratefully, right? Express that gratitude. Maybe you like poetry. Write an ode. Maybe you don't like poetry. Write an ode. Maybe you don't like poetry. Write an ode. Maybe you don't like poetry. Maybe as Van Gogh did, right? When the essay is referring to Van Gogh, he was in a mental health facility, and he was basically grappling with some very serious emotions, right? And a part of his recovery was going out into the garden and seeing nature's beauty, right? This essay provides a really nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's of a flower. So that's of a flower. So that's of a flower. So that's of a flower. So that's a very nice painting of his, which I'll reference in a moment here. That's of a flower. So that's ask new questions of the day and those answers and that meaning you pursue can really be healthy for you. And I leave you here with one more quote by Marcel Proust, which I love, right? The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. That's the whole thing right there. I wake up in my apartment, same apartment every day. I take the same walk to get to my coffee every day. And I want to, on that walk, grapple with how that's amazing. I want to feel good about that. So maybe it's taking a moment to cultivate gratitude. Maybe it's taking a moment to engage with a question that's going to drive me to see the importance of that, right? That being that walk from bedroom to kitchen. We can train ourselves to have new eyes. I think a part of it is maybe examining what this essay offered to us, right? Opening ourselves up to our daily lives and seeing that there's beauty there. There's progress there. There are challenges there that will be meaningful for us if we confront them. There are small, minor wins, as the essay said, that we can celebrate, that we should celebrate. And we can stop looking so much to the future. We can instead look at the day. So hope this was helpful. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you soon. Hello, everybody. How you doing? I hope all is well. Welcome to another episode on Living in the Moment. So today we're going to be talking primarily about two ideas. One of them is memento mori. The other is delimiting the present. So both of these, I think, are kind of in their own right, a whole set of ideas and practices that are going to help us live in the moment more and more. So I'm going to start with the first one, which is living in the moment. So I'm going to start with the first one, which is living in the moment. So I'm going to start with the first one, which is living in the moment. So I'm going to start with the first one, which is meaningfully and help us not, let's say, have our attention pushed and pulled by and to the past and the future. So let's start with the first one, which is meaningfully and help us not, let's say, let's get into two quotes from Marcus Aurelius' meditations that I think kind of give us some good motivation for the discussion. First one is, do not act as though the years of your life are 10,000. Destiny hangs over your head. And the next, let your every action, word, and thought be that of one who is prepared to leave this life at any moment. So don't act as though your life is 10,000 years, right? That is about taking action, obviously. Right? That's about creating urgency. Okay, so if we understand for the Stoics, and we'll get into a little bit of a reading from Hadew on this, that we are finite, that we don't exist forever, or for 10,000 years, that the people around us don't either, that should impact the way we live. It should lead to a certain level of vigilance, carefulness, thoughtfulness, around what we do. Right? One of the mantras I've been repeating to myself, because I'm someone who is a fan of memento mori, right? I'm someone who does on a daily basis visit the fact, that fact of life, mind, and of course, everyone else's that we're not here forever. And it has honestly given me a sense of both peace and urgency. That's been helpful for me. It's definitely grounded me in the moment more than other strategies I've used. So again, that in and of itself, memento mori is a mantra. So I was using that for a while. But this is my new one, my new one, because I think at times I have the, let's say the tendency to be a little bit too intense with that. So my new mantra is, look, I tell myself life is long, hopefully. And if it's not, I want to spend it doing something good. Right? And that is going to inform what I do on a daily basis. So for me, something good means something that is of service, and is useful to others. Something that's truthful, something that's, you know, something that allows me to use my skills. And on the other side of that, of course, is something that makes me feel good. Something I enjoy doing, right? I want to enjoy my days. Obviously, not every single moment will be enjoyable. I don't expect that, of course, right? That being said, again, we talked about eudaimonia versus happiness. I'm going to pursue eudaimonia. And I think ultimately, that mantra for me of, you know, acknowledging that, hopefully, I'll live a long time. But if I don't, and today might be the last day, I want to go out doing something good. I want to go out doing work I'm proud of. I want to go out loving the people around me the way they deserve to be loved. I want to go out feeling good about what I offer the world. And that's been really motivational for me. And I don't think, you know, I had this conversation with a friend of mine, well, a group of friends, actually, like, you know, without the sense of memento mori, can you ever really do anything to the best of your ability? Right? Because Mark is really here is reminding himself, it's like, let your every action, word and thought, everyone be that of one who is prepared to leave this life at any moment. So it's this idea, we'll confront this again in the episode, this idea of the eminence, the eminence of death, right? We don't know when it might come. So if you're, if we're out here living, or, you know, thinking living, like we're going to be here for 10,000 years, do you really put your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind? Do you really give all of yourself, right? Your mind, body, and soul? Like, do you really push yourself? And again, this is, I think you're already hearing me, I get a little too intense with this, because I really, I think this is really profoundly, just interesting and cool idea. Right? And just keep in mind, this isn't, I don't want this to become, I think, you know, a part of what we talked about in one episode is culture, like our modern culture. So I think some of this too, for me, at least, I would misinterpret it only to, let's say, apply it to, like, let's say, challenging myself, and not to enjoying the slower moments in life. Right? Which is to say, a healthy life is balanced, and a healthy life involves leisure too. So this is going to sound, I'm trying to say this, but it's like, be intense about your leisure, right? So if you're going to relax, relax. If you're going to eat, eat. If you're going to work out, work out. You know what I mean? Like, if we're going to, there's a, there's a phrase in my, in the Italian dialect, where my family's from, I can't ever get this phrase right. I'm not going to say it in Italian. I always mess it up. But it pretty much means, look, if we're going to go, let's go. If we're going to stay, let's stay. And what I, what I interpret that, you know, how, again, when I was a kid, I didn't know what that really meant. I would just get yelled at me, and I'd kind of just move. But ultimately, now that I do this for a living, I think about that. I'm like, I get that. Whatever you do, do with all that you have. Right? And that's just the best way to live. So it's about cultivating, again, this realization that, you know, this is actually an Italian proverb too, I think. If you can't live longer live deeper. Right? So you can't control how long you're going to live. But you can't control the degree to which you engage in the moment. And that's where that depth comes in. Right? I can really talk to you. Or I'm kind of like, eh. Right? This was the last conversation I was going to have with a loved one. Right? How would I want that to go? Kind of a weird question, but maybe one that could illuminate ways we could live better. Right? Ways we could live, you know, treat others more better. It's a great way to look at this too. Like, if this was the last conversation I was going to have with my father and we're arguing, I really want to reach a resolution and, you know, try to end it in a way that was loving. Right? And that would not only benefit the relationship if I did pass away unexpectedly, but also it would benefit the relationship if I'm alive for another 50 years. Right? So think about, again, the application of the idea. This won't work for everyone. And by that, I mean, some of us might really just reject this idea. That's fine, of course. But I do ask that you consider it. Right? And I think that's even more important. And I think that's even more in and of itself a worthy practice to some extent. Right? With some ideas. This hopefully is one of them. Right? So maybe memento mori, you know, grounds us in the moment because, again, it encourages us to cultivate that depth, to do whatever we're doing with as much of ourselves as we can muster in the moment, with all of our focus, all of our intentionality, all of our energy. Right? Again, when it's time to relax, really relax. I'm not sure where we're all from, but I had some cookies from this place in Astoria called Chip. And I really, you know, regular basis, I eat very healthy. But when I eat, I'm going to eat. I had, you know, I had about three cookies. Okay? Because, you know what? I'm not going to go halfway on the cookies. I had, you know, I ate healthy all week. But when I'm at Chip, and by the way, go to Chip. If you haven't gone to Chip yet in Astoria, you really are missing out. The s'mores cookie was phenomenal. So was the everything bagel cookie. Just for some recommendations. Okay? And I was really with, and this is going to sound weird, but I was really just, you know, I was really with the cookie. I wasn't looking at my phone. I wasn't even talking to anybody. Right? I was really just enjoying the cookie. All right? So we can cultivate this type of consciousness. And we're going to encounter the idea of the thickness of the moment. We can train ourselves to see our days as more meaningful. Which may be to say we can make them more meaningful. Right? I think this, we're going to hopefully be hearing and feeling some connections between what I'm saying today and what I've already shared with the other episode, right? Van Gogh looked at a flower in a different way. Right? And not even, let's say that I would look at a flower, although obviously, you know, he's an artist. It is different. And we're all different no matter what anyway. But he even looked at that flower that he painted in that one scenario differently than the other flowers around it. He engaged with it in a different way in the painting that we referenced in the other episode. Right? So I think, you know, another thing, memento mori, this idea that we're expiring, it makes us feel like we're in a different place. Right? So I think, you know, to see the urgency of the moment, the urgency of the day, it might be our last. And again, we don't have to live there, I don't think, at every second reminding ourselves of that. But if it's something that we encounter, we revisit on a regular enough basis, it might imbue or give our lives a greater sense of meaning. A greater, again, to use that another Italian proverb, right? A greater sense of depth. And even just confronting that question, right? Here and there. What if this was the last time I went away with my family and we're all here? What if this is the last time I can, you know, exercise like this? Let me give it my all, right? And of course, your best will be different every day, right? But it's about that intentionality and about seeing that there's virtue there, there's goodness there, there's happiness, eudaimonia there. But if we're just never really engaging with the moment, there's nothing. Because again, all we have is now, right? So we have to train this a little bit. These are great quotes, I think, for Marcus Aurelius to get us started. Right? How would you want your last day to be? It's also a really interesting question. How could we try to make every day like that? And if you try that for a few weeks or a month or whatever, well, a month is a few weeks, you know what I mean? Would your life get better? If you set your gaze towards that, right? That aim, that question, if you situated yourself, how would that maybe change your daily activities? And how would that really change both your inner disposition, right? How you feel on a regular basis? And also maybe what you offer the world? Would your work at your job be a little bit better? Would your work at school be a little bit better? Things to think about. So on that note, I want to go to Pierre Hodeau a little bit here and share a few ideas that I think will hopefully support some of these opening remarks. We're going to break down the practice a little bit. What does it mean to delimit the present? How can we, you know, embody that in our daily lives a little bit? But first, I want to briefly share a little bit. On the memento mori situations. I think that's, that I think has to be the starting point. here because that will give life to why and how we should deal with the present, right? So this is from Pierre Hodeau, once again, kind of summarizing Stoicism and Epicureanism in this regard. For the Stoics, as for the Epicureans, it is the eminence of death which gives the present instant its value. So think about how profound that is for a second, right? If you're not thinking about death at all, if you're out here again, I'm here for 10,000 years, you never confront that reality. It's almost saying here, it's implicitly like you're not going to see the value of the present, not the way you want to live, right? And not to get overly morose here, but we as in humans, right? Human cultures have different traditions here, of course, but ultimately pretty much everybody has some type of death ritual, right? We acknowledge death. A part of that, among many other parts, of course, is that we acknowledge death. We acknowledge death. We acknowledge death. We need that reminder. We need to have rituals, memorials, habits around these things, these feelings, these reflections. Why? Because it's going to call, hopefully, it's going to call within ourselves, call for a new type of consciousness. Let me have the quote here is reiterating we already had, right? We must carry out each action of our lives as if it were the last. What type of mark do I want to leave? Is also, I think, a question that this quote kind of encourages us to pursue, right? If this were the last time, fill in the blank, how would I want to do it? This is the secret of concentration on the present moment. We are to give it all its seriousness, value, and splendor in order to show up the vanity of all that we pursue with so much worry, all of which in the end will be taken away from us by death. We must live each day with a consciousness so acute and an attention so intense that we can say to ourselves each evening, I have lived. I have actualized my life and have had all that I could expect from life. In the words of Seneca, he has peace of mind who has lived his entire life every day. So what does this really mean, right? We could even, I think, look at this and break it down kind of cool and in kind of a cool way as an analogy, right? You wake up, it's like you're born again, right? Aristotle said, right? The sun is new each day. The world is new each day. Change is the only constant. You woke up, let's cultivate gratitude there. That's meaningful in and of itself. Right? But here you are, you woke up anew. That's like being born, of course. You're out of slumber into life, right? Then I think in the morning, we want to get productive. We want to wake up first, right? We want to wake up. It's like, and even like think about the idea of being born and kind of like waking up early, you know, you're kind of moving out of bed. You're not really with it yet, right? Some of us might need coffee or water, or some of us might need a drink, or some of us might just have to move around a little bit, whatever. But there's the first few moments of waking up, like you're still kind of half asleep, right? I also think in the morning is likely when, well, I think it's important what we consume to start our day, right? And that's not just food and water. That's also what we see, what we listen to. I think we can set the tone for the day with some deliberation that could be really helpful, right? Then in the middle of the day, you're likely, like late morning, afternoon, you're going to be productive, right? Then it would make sense at the end of the day, you're kind of getting tired, the end of your life, right? When you're, again, not to get too morose, but typically, you know, God willing, you know, you live until, you know, we all live until our elderly years, right? You're just, you know, you're less capable of doing stuff, unfortunately, right? You're typically not as, you know, physically able at the very least, right? Just as one example. Then what happens? You pass away. So similar with the day, right? You kind of get tired. Hopefully you've, once again, you know, you're not as physically able, right? You're not as physically able, but you've lived a day. You've felt various emotions. You've engaged with people in a healthy way. You've offered something to the world that's uniquely your own to some degree that day. And then you go to sleep, right? So even a day in general kind of mimics life to an extent, right? You kind of gain experience in the morning, in the afternoon, you kind of execute on things early afternoon, late evening, call it a day, right? There are some similarities here, I think, from more of a practical standpoint, in addition to a philosophical one. Right? And also with this, I think this, when I read this quote, it changed my consciousness in a different regard where, you know, what should we expect from a day? Well, we shouldn't expect that we're happy all day and we shouldn't settle for being, let's say, sad all day. And of course, there are some days where that's going to be the case, either one of those, right? Or seemingly. But ultimately we should be open to this idea that like, you know what? During a day, it's normal to have ups and downs. Same thing with a whole life, right? One bad moment doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have ups and downs. And so, you know, one bad day doesn't necessarily make for a whole bad day. And one bad day doesn't make for a whole bad week. Again, of course, certain circumstances don't fit into this, but I'm speaking a little bit in generalities here, right? So I think he's alerting us to this fact. To have a whole day, I'm sorry, to have a whole life in a day might just mean that, you know, we have to be open to things being kind of up and down and to embrace that. But to actualize a life, once again, might mean to pursue eudaimonia, taking hold of the fact that we're happy all day. And so, you know, one bad day doesn't necessarily mean that we're happy all day. And so, you know, we have to be open to things being kind of up and down and to embrace that. But to actualize a life, once again, might mean to pursue eudaimonia, taking hold of the present moment, taking hold of the day with some intentions, with some deliberate actions, focusing for the Stoics on what we can control, focusing on the Picareans for the simple pleasures of, or focusing on the simple pleasures of existing, right? Breathing, enjoying some movement, enjoying some food, enjoying some thoughts, right? Presenting to ourselves pleasant thoughts. Trying to set ourselves on the path of enjoying the day and also tending to our important duties for that day. To the best, you know, with the, you know, with our, you know, with the best amount of effort and focus we can give to them. Right? To go to bed at night, to feel fulfilled. Right? To pursue that on a daily basis. Again, we cannot do it to the best of our ability for the Stoics to be able to do it. We cannot do it to the best of our ability for the Stoics to be able to do it. We cannot do it to the best of our ability for the Stoics to be able to do it. We cannot do it to the Picareans, according to Hadeau, without remembering that we're mortal. So maybe we need to practice around this, right? Maybe wake up quickly, right? Remind yourself of that. In all honesty, I recently, I bought a painting that's like the classic memento mori painting. It's a flower, a skull, and an hourglass, right? It's supposed to be this reminder of time's running out. And I think for me, like the flower, we can, we're going to grow, we're going to make something, right? Beautiful for the world. Right? And not necessarily in spite of this fact, the opposite of that, but because of this fact, you know what you're inevitably moving towards. Remember, that's the hourglass, right? Time is ticking, but it can be something beautiful. It meaning this life, this day, this moment. So memento mori is a driving force here, as Hadeau says. Now, let's get into, I think, one practice that once again connects to that and is fueled by it and fuel also for it, right? So the fundamental attitude of the Stoic must, I'm sorry, the fundamental attitude that the Stoic must maintain at each instant of his life is one of attention, vigilance, and continuous tension, concentrated upon each and every moment in order to not miss anything, which is contrary to reason. We find an excellent description of this attitude in Marcus Aurelius when he's telling himself, quote, this is enough for you. And now for you, he means him. His meditations, as I've said many times, were written for him by him to lead the best life he could, right? One, here's what's enough for him, according to himself, right? The judgment you bring to bear at the moment upon reality, as long as it is objective. So what does this mean? We're pursuing objectivity. That's a process. So we're trying to strip away our biases. We're trying to strip away our rational emotions and trying to see what's true in front of us and craft a judgment of it, right? So we can't be distracted when we're doing this. When you're really doing this, you're not thinking about tomorrow. You're not thinking about yesterday. You're really describing what is. That in and of itself is what art starts with to a degree, right? I think it might start with looking at things in a different way and pursuing truth, or maybe it's a deeper truth of what's in front of you. The reality in front of you. It's about the pursuit of that, right? I think a little bit about Dali's famous piece, right? The persistence of memory. It's like he looked at a clock and he saw it melting because I think he got to the deeper truth that really it is, right? It's running. If you can't grab time, right? As we talked about the mathematical, he maybe was getting to the deeper mathematical truth of the present. And then he gets to the second type of stoic conception because the artwork is, you know, it's not just a piece of paper. It's a piece of paper. It's a you know, it exists in time and space, right? And he engaged with it again, with its thickness, the consciousness he brought to bear upon the mathematical understanding of time was a melting clock. But that's what's cool among other things about paint, about paintings. It's like it captures something, right? You have to be attuned and awake to the moment in a very unique way. You have to really be delimiting the present with what you're objectively experiencing to make good art. Especially, maybe not especially, but, for me, paintings come to mind. So he really started with the judgment he was bringing bear upon the reality of looking at a clock. And he pursued a different truth. I think that's a really philosophical truth in that case, an artistic truth. That painting is also a great memento mori painting. Time is running away. Time, again, you can't grab those clocks. You can't stop time. So interesting point here. And how can we practice this? And maybe you do your own form of art in this, or in regards to this judgment idea that Marcus Aurelius was telling himself. Pursue objectivity. And again, I'm sort of using that to mean truth, which I think is interesting. A lot of us, and myself included, we're just ignoring what's in front of us. We're not really judging it. We're not really tuning in. This is very much a da Vinci idea. He was big on this, like training your senses, tuning in to how things feel in the moment, how things look, how things smell, how things-- sound, focusing. Next one. The action. This is, again, what's enough for us. The action we are carrying out in this moment, as long as it is accomplished in the service of the human community. That's a beautiful idea. If you populated your days with actions that were in the service of the human community, one, that's a great idea. And I think when you pair it with number one, with judgment, that's a really kind of potent combination for being helpful. You're talking with someone. You're really trying to understand what they're saying. You're judging what they're saying with all your attention. And of course, judging in this case is neutral. It doesn't mean positive or negative. It just means you're trying to discern and understand them, discern what they're saying, understand their meaning. Then, all right, we're going to take some action here. Let me be useful. Keeping in mind, too, he was a philosopher and also an emperor. And I think this is a really nice thing for anybody who's in any position, right? We're all governing ourselves at the very least, or at least, let's say, trying to, to an extent, right? So putting an eye towards service. How would your day be different if you tried to populate it with actions that you would carry out in the service of the human community, starting with just your community, your immediate family, friends, peers, co-workers? How could that change things? How would that drag your attention to the moment? Because I also think when we do things for others, we care about them more, and that's not a great thing about us, necessarily, because sometimes we are really good friends to other people and we're horrible friends to ourselves. But that being said, it's like when you borrow somebody's whatever, like if you borrow a plate from somebody, you're really focusing on not breaking it, you know? If you're taking action that's supposed to be of service to others, that might encourage you to pay closer attention to it. Again, I'm not saying it's a good thing. We should always try to work in ways-- and this is the third one, right? That is, work in ways that are going to help us, too, right? Back to the idea of vocation, right? Personal fulfillment and public service. We can do actions that are falling into the intersection of those two things. But I think calling this to mind, once again, drags our attention to the moment. The third one, the inner disposition in which you find yourself at this moment, as long as it is a disposition of joy in the face of the conjunction of events caused by extraneous causality. So the last part is just like, all right, we don't control everything. The universe will throw stuff at us. Other people's wills are out of our control. They will act in ways that-- we have to deal with, and we want to make peace with that. Once again, I think this is a process that we can certainly feel a sense of fulfillment from. And we're almost seeing him describing a vocation here. If you took a vocational approach to life, again, the questions alone will drag your attention to how you're acting, thinking, and feeling in the moment. So judgment is thinking. Action, obviously, acting. And the inner disposition is feeling. It's not just about thinking, feeling, feeling, and acting. It's about thinking, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. It's about thinking, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is feeling, feeling, feeling, and acting. And the inner disposition is thinking, feeling, feeling, and acting. Thoughts and feelings, as we're working with them, as he's saying here, to what end? Well, inner disposition, try to be joyful. Action, try to be of service. Judgment, try to be objective. He's training himself to delimit the present. And tell himself, all of this, which this is a lot, is enough for you, he would tell himself. And right, we know this, obviously, because he wrote this in his meditations. And all this should lead to two conclusions. One, this type of lifestyle, where we're focusing on these judgments, actions, and inner dispositions, is enough to keep us busy. Two, we have no need to think of anything else. And secondly, it's enough to make us happy. And again, we replace happy with, it's enough to help us pursue eudaimonia. There is no need to seek for anything else. And think about the idea of seeking, too, right? When you're doing this, you're really making a self. And you're taking action in the world, so you're influencing the world. That's going to bring you to the future anyway. Does it make sense to have a general vision of the future that you revisit, that you cultivate, that's compelling? Of course. That being said, you don't get there as a result of that. You get there as a result of this, actually taking action, feeling good about that action, so you're encouraged to continue, having truthful, objective judgment, so you can take action more effectively. So you craft the future through the present. So delimiting the present, which is what all these things sort of compose, means turning one's attention away from the past and the future in order to concentrate it upon what one is in the process of doing. Get back to that word process that came up a little bit already, right? The present of which Marcus speaks is a present delimited by human consciousness. The Stoics distinguished-- and we already talked about this, right? Between-- the Stoics distinguished two ways of defining the present. The first consisted in understanding the present as a limit between the past and the future. From this point of view, no present time ever actually exists, since time is infinitely divisible. This, however, is an abstract, quasi-mathematical division, with the present being reduced to an infinitesimal instant, right? So not all that useful, but still meaningful to understand, I think, right? Back to Dali's clocks a little bit. The second way consisted in defining the present with reference to human consciousness. That's what he's trying to cultivate. When he's saying, judge objectively, act in a way that's of service, try to be joyful, pursue eudaimonia, that's consciousness. In this case, the present represented a certain thickness of time, corresponding to the attention span of lived consciousness. When Marcus advises us to delimit the present, he is talking about his lived present relative to consciousness. This is an important point. The present is defined by its reference to our thoughts and actions. So let's make this super practical. What actions do you already take that help you do this? What actions do you take that involve objective judgments, that involve acts of service, and/or-- because I do think there are some actions that, again, for example, self-righting, although I do think it prepares you to be in the world in a healthier way, which is likely to help others, likely to be of service, there is a sense that that's a very internal practice, right? So we can, for a moment, say, and/or cultivate a healthy inner disposition. Think about those things that you do. Maybe it's painting. Maybe it's writing. Maybe it's making music. Maybe it's studying for school. You like the topic. Maybe it's working out, whatever, right? We need these things in our world. These are going to help us with our spiritual body and likely also our intellectual and physical bodies. But we need to populate our days with something that helps us deal with the present. Maybe, once again, in self-righting, we can kind of write letters to our days. At the beginning of the day, dear today. At the end of the day, dear today. As a way, once again, of confronting the wholeness, the fullness. The opportunity that exists there, or that we've taken advantage of for that day. So I just checked this. I'm going to get cut off in like 50 seconds. So one, I maybe have to figure out how to work this anchor better so I can record for longer. But actually, I think this is a pretty good place to stop this lecture. So I think the next episode will likely be about the nature of the past. And/or the nature of the future, and how we can cultivate healthy relationships to those. But I do hope this conversation about how and why we should live in the present was helpful for us. Thank you for listening, and take care.
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