Wherever you go, there you are!

“Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” - James Joyce

By Munish Gupta

January 6^th, 2017

intro

The past few weeks have felt quietly transformative. I’ve been sitting with a handful of thoughts—ones that arrived through books, reflection, and those long, lingering moments between things. In December, I found myself returning once again to Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. That book has a strange power. Every time I open it, a single line or idea seems to take hold—and everything shifts, even if just slightly. This time was no different.

Alongside it, I’ve been slowly making my way through Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic and The Daily Stoic. Together, they’ve formed a sort of quiet dialogue in my mind—lessons about clarity, discipline, acceptance, and what it means to live well.

Originally, I meant this post to be a collection of some of those reflections. But as I pieced it together, I found myself adding in a few photographs from 2016. They aren’t directly related, but somehow, they carry the same mood. A quiet reminder of time, place, and presence.

White River National Forest, colorado

Fear keeps pace with hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise me; both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse. Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.

- Seneca

mt rainier national park

People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like.

By going within.

Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquillity. And by tranquillity I mean a kind of harmony.

So keep getting away from it all—like that. Renew yourself.

- Marcus Aurelius

San Francisco

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

- Franz Kafka

the good, the bad & the ugly

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .”

- Epictetus

Mt rainier national park

....always to define whatever it is we perceive—to trace its outline—so we can see what it really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name—the thing itself and its components, to which it will eventually return.

- Marcus Aurelius

drake's beach, point reyes national seashore

He does only what is his to do, and considers constantly what the world has in store for him—doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us—and it carries us.

- Marcus Aurelius

Mt Rainier National Park

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley

acadia national park

Absolute truth is indestructible. Being indestructible, it is eternal. Being eternal, it is self-existent. Being self-existent, it is infinite. Being infinite, it is vast and deep. Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and intelligent. It is because it is vast and deep that it contains all existence. It is because it is transcendental and intelligent that it embraces all existence. It is because it is infinite and eternal that it fulfills or perfects all existence. In vastness and depth it is like the Earth. In transcendental intelligence it is like Heaven. Infinite and eternal, it is the Infinite itself. Such being the nature of absolute truth, it manifests itself without being seen; it produces effects without motion; it accomplishes its ends without action.

- 'Doctrine of the Mean'

Cadillac Mountain, Bar Harbor

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

- Seneca

Schoodic Point, acadia national park

How would any of that stop you from keeping your mind calm—reliably sizing up what’s around you—and ready to make good use of whatever happens? So that Judgment can look the event in the eye and say, “This is what you really are, regardless of what you may look like.” While Adaptability adds, “You’re just what I was looking for".

- Marcus Aurelius

white sands national monument

Our actions might be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.