Standards

Standards I spend plenty of hours trying to assuage my fears of losing an ongoing fight against myself and the dark logic of a wholly absurd universe that I feel ever estranged from. However I choose to look at the empty bottles around my bed and the spilt wine as simple missteps on my track to find a way to live in accordance with the world. A world often filled with disharmony and pain, but a world full of fools and not monsters. It is a long standing conviction I carry that the people of this world do wrong more out of ignorance or stupidity than out of malice. And when a fool offends you how can you really be angry? I meditate on Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. I think long on the world and wish to do good. I want not to desperately burn out trying to effect change, but instead to do what good I can to help those I can, but not exhaust myself against the endless torrent of misery. I have spoke to some people who believe this world is already lost. Religious folks who look to heaven for salvation. Or even people I have more in common with, revolutionaries who think we can replace the status quo. Although I would love to see the world change I fear it would not be for the better. Instead I content myself to my studies, to my struggle. Somewhere in my metaphysical struggles to face every day I find enough strength to drag myself out of bed. I do everything I can to help the people I meet. I ask the gods I don't believe in for strength to confront my own weaknesses and failings. Strength to push the empty bottles over to the corner and forget that reprieve for awhile to allow my mind clarity. The clarity to allow those things beyond my control no control over me. To see the world not as something to be challenged and changed, but something to be taught and allowed to mature. I think that there are two types of revolt. An idea common in many ideas and systems of thought. The lesser revolt, a direct challenge to things that are corrupt decadent or wrong, and the greater revolt, a choice to withdraw enough from a world that needs to change, but to live happily with your convictions at peace. “Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.” (the Good Emperor)