July Meditations
Thoughts to ponder and act on this month
1.
Some of the noises you’ll have to silence are those coming from people close to you, people who mean well, are loving, but just don’t have the foresight to see the things you see.
It won’t be easy, but even here, you must be ruthless. You must throw out the persuasion of those who mean well but just aren’t competent enough to understand the future you’re trying to build.
2.
A young man, who, I think, is trying to learn from me, recently asked me why I don’t drink. He speculated that, as he’s known me, I’m a careful man, and that he thought it might have to do with avoiding the health effects of drinking.
He seemed earnest, and so I told him the truth: I’m simply a person who doesn’t drink. The existence of alcohol is irrelevant; I don’t notice it. What people need or usually use it for, it’s something that doesn’t exist in me. And then I added a philosophical reason: the only time I permit a subpar level of consciousness is when I am sleeping.
The moral of the story was that we should get to the point where we won’t have to exercise restraint, because we are simply the people unaffected by the temptations in question. We are beyond the thing and what people usually use it for.
(On this subject, it would be irresponsible not to recommend Adam PT, whose writing offers a rich dissection of sobriety, decisions, and agency.)
3.
Communities aren’t hard or impossible to build; we just appear to be more interested in dominating than belonging. Whether virtually or in real life, we care about status games too much. We are egotistical. So, if we aren’t at the top of something, we’d rather not be part of it.
Communities are like a relationship or friendship: the moment you start obsessing over who belongs where in the food chain, you are interested in games, not being with others.
Not everything must be about assessing your position; sometimes it’s just about a place where you can just be, not be anything. The healthiest communities ooze this vibe.
4.
I’ve met very lost people, people who are just drifting, floating, and wandering, but I’ve also met very focused people who have determined what they want with sharp precision and are going after it with dazzling focus. Choose your environments carefully. You’ll be in good company, either way.
5.
An army is its colonels; a nation is its middle class. If battalions or brigades are underperforming, your military is ill; if the middle class is struggling, your nation is in decline. While everyone else is watching the generals, while every commentator is focused on the elite, assess health by watching the middle. Every system, every order, is its middle.
6.
Some children are such that they must be corrected, but most of the time, it is a problem of parents who are such that they cannot be emulated.
Good parents, leaders, bosses, etc. sanction infrequently. They don’t have to, because they are men and women of standards, and the last thing you want, indeed the sharpest rebuke, is seeing that disappointed look when someone says, without saying, “You’ve failed to meet expectations.”
7.
There are more fools than you can count, respond to, rebuke, or worry about. If you give attention to what doesn’t merit, where there were nine fools, there are now ten.
8.
Each person must build their nation so that it stops being a place people are running away from. I don’t want my grandchildren to ever beg someone to let them in, because they are refugees, or because the host can use their labor.
I love traveling; I take visiting and being visited extremely seriously because of the honor that they confer. But I like going only where I’m wanted. And if nobody ever wants me, that will be fine, still, because few ever match the company I can offer myself.
I don’t know of any nation where people aren’t leaving, just as I don’t know any that people aren’t lining up to enter. Some nations are more attractive or terrible than others, of course.
This meditation seeks to remind, kindly but firmly, that there is no way around building stable homes and nations. We belong to our homes and nations. A bird without a nest gets rained on; an animal without a burrow will be food for predators when the night comes.
9.
A lot of struggle with writing is a struggle with range. A writer who writes about just one thing—and in one way—quickly becomes insufferable.
Even in strictly personal writing like journaling, the thoughts you pen should be diverse, and your scrutiny of them and reflection about them should demonstrate both depth and extensity. Otherwise, you become too familiar with yourself, you become bored with your own thinking, and then you stop exploring it.
10.
A friend of mine recently asked my thoughts about an issue she has been dealing with for quite some time. I told her the thing is bad, but it has been made infinitely worse by the fact that she just doesn’t appear to know how to end things. The thing sucks her in, her ability to deal with it is continuously weakened, her health has suffered, and she has lost time.
We must know when not to keep fighting, because the thing being fought for isn’t worth it anymore. We must know when to end things, cut our losses, and move on. There’s hardly ever a point in making a fight the last fight. There’s always time to rebuild, but only if we aren’t totally sunk by this fight we now so badly want to be the last one we ever fight.
Nothing is ever so big that it cannot be lost, and yet, from this friend, I’ve seen that one can totally lose the future in a fight to keep the past.
This isn’t a defense of quitting. Rather, it’s a call for better judgment. Life hasn’t ended. You cannot win your tenth battle, the one that will come when you are 60, if you’re felled by this third one, happening at 30.
All people who don’t know when to cut their losses keep fighting, their minds and spirits are irreversibly crushed, and what should have been a bad experience becomes the loss and trauma they’ll never recover from.
11.
Most wars aren’t blitzkrieg; they are battles of attrition. What is big enough to merit your confronting it, it’s foolish to believe a few initial powerful strikes will end things.
Always prepare for a long war, and if it’s unwinnable, you should be bold and farseeing enough to follow the advice in the previous meditation, taking whatever gains there is.
If a cobra dances with a mongoose, it’s a deadly one, and it’s usually a question of who tires whom. Here, the quick reflexes just aren’t enough; time determines who gets eaten.
What does the 4th one mean?the line...you'll be in good company either way
Love your take on drinking. I am not a drinker myself. Never been. I just don't think that I need what it offers and never feel tempted towards it as well. I have personally been asked this question many times as well, and your answer is so on point for it.