115. ...the wet slap of Scottish spring...
(morning thinking)
The Daily Stoic Journal asks, “Am I seeking the beauty of human excellence?” and I wonder, is excellence something I need to seek?
For all the value I find in stoicism there is a strong thread of striving for excellence and perfection that I don’t know is necessarily healthy. Not all the time. Do we really need to strive for constant perfection and improvement? I like trying to be more. I like building something good. I like working toward better, just a little bit every day, but I don’t think I care about excellent. I want to be good. Good enough?
I am fit enough. I’m creative enough. I try to be kind and helpful. Am I good enough? I hope so.
I can carry luggage enough for my whole family. I can lift furniture about and help a friend move home. I could, if we were suddenly on a war footing run through the night with secret encoded messages from the resistance's Edinburgh outpost to the underground HQ in Glasgow.
- Much as Edinburgh enjoys being the peacetime capital I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that if things kicked off apocalypse style, if a fight against A.I. death robots raged, we’d dig in in Glasgow.
Creativity is beautiful. I make up stories and draw ideas from nothing into something. You wouldn’t, I don’t think, say I’m excellent or that there is excellence in my creativity, but it’s plenty good enough.
I help friends, neighbours, my community and people I don’t know whenever I can. I live cleanly and try not to make a mess. I hope to leave the small part of the world I inhabit slightly better when entropy finally takes my body. I hope not to inhibit anyone else’s easy passage through life.
These are all pretty good things. Virtuous character traits. Are they excellent though? Would excellent mean to pull ahead, to stand out or above, to excel? Am I motivated by being better than other people? Maybe I’ve misinterpreted the question.
The question was “am I seeking the beauty of human excellence?” Seeking suggests effort but human excellence is all around. It’s not at all difficult to spot some. I seem to find it often enough. The beauty of human excellence.
I saw a couple, stood tightly embraced on the beach, lit by a gap in the clouds. There’s rain out in the Forth between the shore and the horizon, the clouds smudge down toward the sea. The point of the couple’s temporarily redundant umbrella is stuck in the sand, a signpost or flag declaring momentary respite from the wet slap of Scottish spring time and in this gap they choose to hug. They are excellent and beautiful.
Every morning the old lady and dog who’s names I don’t know walk the length of Porty twice - once on the shoreline and once on the prom. She carries a bin bag and litter picking stick while her dog follows along. On her second pass by my window the bin bag is full. I first spotted her four years or so ago when I began my early morning routine. How many bags of litter must she have collected up? How many tons of beer cans and crisp packets might they have intercepted? She smiles whenever I say hello. The dog does a small tail wag that I think is equivalent to a smile. Smile adjacent. They are excellent and beautiful.
Quiet reading time in an armchair within a morning sun square, lain upon by the cat. Beautiful and excellent.
Today’s question is a good illustration of what I think I perceive as a failing of this Stoic philosophy. It’s two thousand years old. Your Zenos, Senecas and Aurelius’s lived in a time when people might be ordered to open their own wrists by a tyrant emperor. Shit could get dark.
I think there are definitely times in life, or in the history of life, when it is (or has been) necessary to dig in and work hard to elevate one’s self or society out of wrong thinking, a misguided situation or poor mode of living. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be better, but constant striving for excellence might very well get in the way of contentment.
When we’re lost it helps to dig in, push hard and aim for a better place. It is, however, also important to recognise sufficiency, good enough, okay, and fit as fit for purpose.
I think Buddhism’s recognition that life will always contain suffering and its focus on finding contentment within that discomfort is a good foil to Stoicism’s relentless self improvement. I wonder what other philosophies might add value to my patchwork quilt of understanding. What schools of thought do you use? What wisdom do you draw on? Who’s good to read? Let me know? Comment below.
Thanks for reading.
Paul.
Just read your nourishment comment, have I now broken Major 🙃
Agreed, constant striving is not where it's at, for me at least.
A balanced approach is needed in my life IMO, otherwise I burn out and I have in the past. Sometimes it's good to go fuck it, I'm not going to bother today.
If you are constantly looking to improvement, or more often than not looking for betterment, deep down you are projecting that are not enough as you are.
In turn, your goal must lie in the future, but we don't live there, so it causes friction. And when we do get there, there's always an improvement to be made.
It's like a scenario Major Major Major Major would come up with in Catch22, always kicking the baw down the street to the next achievement.
Yes I look to improve, but not always as you'll miss out on other things.