Something Beautiful

Wisdom = not letting things get to you?

The modern philosopher-essayist Alain de Botton has said that "Most of 'wisdom' boils down to the art of not letting things get to you." Is that true?

I read these words in high school and have often thought of them since then. And always to my benefit --

Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? -- Henry David Thoreau

The thoughts we wish to dominate our lives

I found this quotation at Turnstone --

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. -- Henry David Thoreau

So often we hear or read something that we wish to make a part of our permanent thinking and evaluating. But then we drop it almost right away. I've done that on these very pages. We can probably have only a very few such thoughts of this kind. We probably need to choose them and then deliberately, intentionally, fix them in our minds and hearts.

Dealing with accusations

I've been dealing for the last couple of months with a set of accusations that have been made against me. No one has accused me of anything illegal, but the charges against me has stung pretty badly. I feel that they are unfair, but I've had to pay a pretty steep price for them anyway. And that has caused me to remember some advice that Senator Ted Kennedy used to give President Bill Clinton.

During the impeachment crisis in 1998 and early 1999, President Clinton and Senator Kennedy talked often, and the two men sometimes reflected on the unwelcome publicity they had brought upon themselves.

Clinton later told Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer the following:

His advice is always simple: it's just sort of get up and go to work. Just keep going and remember why you wanted the job in the first place.

Clinton continued:

He's a very tough guy and he understands that if somebody accuses you of something that's true, maybe you're your own worst enemy, and you have to hope that when people add up the score, there will be more pluses than minuses.

And if somebody accuses you of something that is not [true], then it will probably get sorted out sooner or later, and there is very little you can do about it except do the job you asked the people for.

Truth (the basis for morality)

"Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality." (Frank Herbert)

How to be happy (give something away)

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times summarizes research showing that human beings are hard-wired to be altruistic.  

Be yourself (really)

I'm going to put this here because it is something I need to remember --

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I also like this: "Run your own race."

Causes and effects

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

— Herman Melville

Permanent ideals

I think today's Positive Quote, from Honore de Balzac, is particularly terrific:

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.