The Art of Living
And the redemption of learning from life
Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.
This month we’re exploring the theme of adversity.
“Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond the proper subject-matter. For just as wood is the material of the carpenter, bronze that of the statue maker, so each individual’s own life is the subject-matter/material of the art of living.”
Nearly every ancient school of philosophy looked at life as a guide to learn from. Philosophy, in other words, was not just something to do during times of leisure, rather, it was an active pursuit to learn about oneself through daily living.
Plato, in the Socratic dialogue of the Apology, writes Socrates as a man determined to direct his life to that of philosophy. This was incredibly influential on all of the Hellenistic schools as it showcased life as the pursuit of wisdom and understanding one’s own self.
Life is not just something that happens to us, it is something we are actively a participant in.
As such, one must examine their life, what works, what doesn’t, and be ruthless in their analysis. We all fail at times, but held within these failures are lessons to be learned.
Likewise, when we succeed, we don’t get a pass, rather, we must examine what lead to the success, how we handled it, what our mindset was like at the time.
It’s only through this ruthless examination of our lives that we can learn to flourish in them.
“Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself. “Keep your philosophy ready too... In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them.”
The idea of philosophy as a way of life was to help cure our soul of the things that prevent us from living a good life. This means that one must study philosophy the same way one would attempt to study medicine. It is not just about theory, rather, it requires practice, each and every day.
“Self-knowledge, like any art or science, renders its subject-matter in a new medium, the medium of ideas, in which it loses its old dimensions and its old place,” George Santayana once wrote.
In order to advance in life, we must be willing to relinquish our old beliefs. Self-knowledge requires we examine and re-examine our thoughts, actions, and desires.
Learning to embrace life, regardless of each day’s outcome leads us through the path of human-flourishment. It is from this process we better learn to handle the challenges of life, both within ourselves and which come from the external world.
Our fates are dictated by how well we can learn to not only embrace life but fully review it. Everything we do provides guidance. We can choose to be resigned when we lose or fail, or we can learn to see how we can improve for the next time.
Life is filled with hardship and challenges, it holds constant ups and downs. But how well we can ride these determines the quality of life we will have.
We can be dragged by events or we can walk with them. We can stand tall to adversity or crumble under it. We can seize the moment when opportunity arrives or we can let it go.
Life is an art in that it requires training through daily living. It requires we examine our actions and the actions of others.
Know thyself may seem like a basic maxim, but it takes a lifetime to master.
Start today.
Before you go…
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Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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