I am about 2 weeks into my month of constant smiling. The Charlie and Ben podcast inspired me to add something to my current challenge. I don’t generally do this mid-challenge, but this particular suggestion just works so well with intentional smiling.

Basically, I am going to answer the question “How are you?” or “How’s it going?” with “Fantastic!” As an alternative, I can use a witty retort like:

• Hunting dragons, you?
• I can’t complain. it’s against the company policy!
• Vertical and breathing.
• My lawyer says I don’t have to answer that question.
• [Place 2 fingers over carotid artery on neck] … beat … I have a pulse, so I must be okay!

Continuing forward with the theme that it’s possible to jumpstart happy feelings by replicating the actions and expressions we normally exhibit when we feel this way, I think adding enthusiastic greetings will be a great addendum to my current challenge.

Earlier this year I gave a speech about the three types of people that answer the question, “How are you?” They are the masker, the overloader, and the zinger.

• The Masker – This is the person that just mumbles an inaunthentic answer such as “Great,” “Good,” “Fine,” “Okay,” or “Present.” All of us have probably done this thousands of times (I know I have).
• The Overloader – This person pours out their whole life story, and generally it isn’t an uplifting one. Even when it is positive, I usually didn’t intend to listen to you talk for 5-10 minutes as I passed you in the breakroom or hallway.
• The Zinger – This is the person that gives a simple response, but one that injects some exhilaration, levity, or curiosity into the brief interaction.

I want to intentionally be the zinger in all of my brief interactions for the rest of this month’s challenge. Also, I am going to choose to use the question,

What’s the vibe today?

instead of the traditional call-and-response questions. I feel that even when others aren’t prepared to give a more authentic answer than just “Fine” to the question of “How are you,” they might be able to be more creative with the above question. Since it is not asking about the person specifically, but just about the “vibe” it sometimes can promote more interesting responses (like “purple,” “curious,” or “boxy”).

One greeting I would love to use more around the right type of people is “Namaste.” However, the few times I have used this recently, I just got really confused looks. So for now, I’m content to just use it in concluding my blog posts.

Namaste.

Anyone that follows my blog realizes sooner or later that my monthly challenges don’t start the first day of a month and continue until the last day. This is true, but only if you are using the Gregorian calendar. In scheduling my challenges, I use a lunisolar calendar.

The popular Gregorian calendar is strictly a solar calendar. What this means is that it tracks the movement of the sun in its calculation of a year. However, it does not use the moon to determine the beginning of a month. It simply approximates month length and places 12 of them in a year. Since the moon revolves around the earth more than 12 times per year, the months don’t line up with moon phases.

A lunar month is approximately 29.5 days. Average months on the Gregorian calendar are 30.5 days. This means you will usually have one of the moon phases twice in the same month. We even have a term for this when it occurs with the full moon: a blue moon, as heard in the expression, “once in a blue moon!”

If you use the Gregorian calendar, anything involving the sun will stay the same year by year:

• Vernal equinox (start of spring) is always March 20
• Summer solstice (start of summer) is always June 20
• Autumnal equinox (start of fall) is always September 20
• Winter solstice (start of winter) is always December 20

Occasionally, these might vary by a day, since the Gregorian calendar is not actually the same length of time as it takes the earth to revolve around the sun. It is a bit shorter, which is why we need a leap year every four years. Actually, even this doesn’t quite sync the calendar and the earth’s yearly revolution, and so there are a few more corrections that are made.

According to the United States Naval Observatory,

Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400. For example, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not leap years, but the year 2000 is.

With those corrections in place, the Gregorian calendar charts the movement of the earth around the sun with precision and accuracy. This is extremely useful in establishing uniform dates across the globe. However, it downgrades months to just tick marks in a year, instead of them being grounded in their own astronomical movement.

This is what a lunisolar calendar tries to incorporate. The problem with a lunisolar calendar is that there aren’t the same amount of months in each year, which makes scheduling things more difficult (holidays for example). However, a lunisolar calendar makes months feel more significant since they are actually rooted in something real – namely, the phases of the moon.

It is for this reason that I use my own version of a lunisolar calendar when scheduling my monthly challenges, as well as for celebrating the new year. How does this calendar work? I am so glad you asked.

I follow a very basic rule in establishing the beginning of the year, the month, and the day: everything is birthed in darkness, reaches full luminosity half-way through, and ends in darkness. Here are the specifics:

• The beginning of the year – The year begins after the winter solstice, or the shortest day of the year (least amount of sunlight).
• The beginning of the month – The month begins after the astronomical new moon, or the moment of greatest darkness.
• The beginning of the day – The day begins at solar midnight, or the moment of time where my location on earth is exactly opposite -180 degrees away from – the sun.

That is basically it. The only slightly complicating factors are that the new year must start at the beginning of a month, and the beginning of each month must start at the beginning of a day. So, to figure out when New Years Day is (according to this calendar), here are the steps you take:

1. Look up when the Winter Solstice is. In 2022, it will occur on December 21st at 3:48 PM.
2. Determine the first new moon that falls after that time. This year, it will be December 23rd at 4:16 AM.
3. Find the next solar midnight after that time. In this case, it will be 12:20 AM on December 24th.

The other issue is the dateline, but I will leave a discussion of that for another time. I hope this clarifies some of my challenge scheduling and perhaps inspires you to better understand the way we mark times and seasons throughout the year.

Namaste.

Tomorrow is the first day of the 9th lunar month this year, and thus a great opportunity to reignite my blogging. My last post on this blog was back in March of this year I believe. I fell off the wagon in regards to my TV/movie abstinence a week or two after that blog post. This past month I have been weaning myself off again and plan on restarting abstinence in this area before the next new moon.

This month, I am revisiting a challenge I conducted several years ago. It will have the same focus as the one I did then, but different specifications. Ever since I left med school a couple years ago, my mood has been more depressed on average, and the traumatic bike accident I had last August certainly didn’t help with that. Intuitively, most of us agree that happiness produces smiling. However, I think the reverse is quite often true as well: smiling results in happiness.

Here are the details of this month’s challenge:

• When around others: Open smile

1. The goal is to show teeth. The size of the smile is irrelevant, and to not wear out my smile muscles, smaller is generally preferable.
2. If the above becomes untenable in some situations, then I can switch to a closed smile for a period of time.
3. When talking, I don’t need to think about this. However, during pauses or breaks in speaking, I should revert to some type of smile.

• When by myself: Half smile

1. In DBT, one of the skills taught is the half smile. What this means is that you just think about smiling and let the corners of your lips move a millimeter or two without going into a full-blown grin.
2. Although the above is what the default will be, I still want to throw in a joyous look every so often.
3. Before retiring for the day, I will do a very short meditation practice that I dedicate towards peaceful sleep and uplifting dreams.

One of the comments I get somewhat regularly after giving a speech or presentation is that my facial expression is a bit too serious. Maybe this challenge will help lighten that up as a bonus.

Namaste.

Tomorrow, I am starting a new challenge. This one will be focusing on creating a sacred environment surrounding my sleep time. I plan on doing this by having a few simple and easy rituals that I commit to follow religiously, both immediately prior to retiring for the day and immediately upon waking.

Without further ado, here are the steps I will follow.
Before Bed (start between 9:45 and 10pm):

1. Call on Yahuwah – Even though I don’t subscribe to Christianity or Hebrew Roots anymore, I still use the name I learned to associate with the divine: Yahuwah. Relationship spirituality is something I value. I want connecting with the Source to begin my nighttime ritual.
2. Light 2 candles – There is something magical about fire. For me, candles symbolize compassionate presence, which is exactly the mood I want to cultivate as I get into bed. I would like to have one on each side of the bed to surround myself with this atmosphere.
3. Dedicate my sleep – When I meditate each day, I like to dedicate my practice to a person, entity, or cause. I am going to do the same thing for my sleep: view it as a practice and dedicate it to something. I could also choose a concept: like peace, love, or joy.

Upon waking (do at first alarm even if not rising at that time):

1. Turn on meditative music – I don’t want a formal guided meditation but just some atmospheric music. Allow myself to enter the new day with compassion and non-judgment. Take a moment to breathe.
2. Light 2 candles – Same routine as before. I want to pull that same energy I cultivated when going to sleep into the new day. I don’t need to get up yet; I want to give myself a few minutes to welcome my mind into a wholesome place so I can start the day with grace.
3. Set an intention for the day – This can be anything, but doing this creates focus. It is not just another day. By setting a unique intention each day I can foster a little novelty and creativity that can encourage me to stay mindful despite any frustrations.

I have been dealing with more depression the last couple weeks. Some of this I think is related to some poorer sleep habits from the past reemerging. I am hopeful this challenge will foster an ongoing wholesomeness into this part of my life.

Namaste.

This will be my last post on the philosophy books I skim-read last year. I did get through the whole list; I even signed up for a free month of Audible to finish listening to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. However, this post will conclude my foray into this arena for now.

I thought I would like Nietzsche a lot more. Honestly, I found him somewhat cynical and condescending. Below are excerpts from Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals.

“The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his conscience.”

I like this description of conscience. Finding the right balance in our relationship to our conscience is difficult and important. We want to allow and encourage that dominating instinct we have to motivate us to skillful behaviors and actions. However, we also want to check the validity and effectiveness of our conscience with reason. This is probably each person’s greatest responsibility.

“The feeling of “ought,” of personal obligation (to take up again the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and ower: here it was that individual confronted individual, and that individual matched himself against individual. There has not yet been found a grade of civilisation so low, as not to manifest some trace of this relationship.”

Nietzsche viewed contractual obligations between buyer and seller as the most ancient and obvious origin for early morality. There have to be certain rules and customs that are followed to allow people to retain their property and be able to trade that property for something else in an equitable settlement. The question of how and why humans evolved the morality that they did is certainly interesting, though personally I’m much more interested in present-day utility.

“It is possible to conceive of a society blessed with so great a consciousness of its own power as to indulge in the most aristocratic luxury of letting its wrong-doers go scot-free.—“What do my parasites matter to me?” might society say. “Let them live and flourish! I am strong enough for it.”—The justice which began with the maxim, “Everything can be paid off, everything must be paid off,” ends with connivance at the escape of those who cannot pay to escape—it ends, like every good thing on earth, by destroying itself.—The self-destruction of Justice! we know the pretty name it calls itself—Grace! it remains, as is obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law.”

The ability we have to lend grace is directly proportional to the amount of power we possess. According to Nietzsche, showing grace is the privilege of the successful. The Biblical story of ‘The Widow’s Mite’ comes to mind. Giving to others when you have little is commendable. Giving out of your surplus not so much.

“To talk of intrinsic right and intrinsic wrong is absolutely non-sensical; intrinsically, an injury, an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, inasmuch as life is essentially (that is, in its cardinal functions) something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character.”

Since I didn’t read the entirety of Nietzsche’s thoughts on morality, I am not even going to begin to try to paraphrase what his moral system looked like. However, just taking the above quote at face value, I can say that I whole-heartedly agree that morality cannot be objective or intrinsic, while I disagree that to live necessarily involves causing harm. The concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ don’t exist independently of our perception of them, and thus are necessarily subjective and conditioned.

I can more objectively talk about right and wrong in the context of a given reference point. If I have the goal of completing an Ironman Triathlon (I do!), then it is right for me to train for this by strenuously working out and eating healthy. It would be wrong for me not to do these things. If you are someone who doesn’t have this goal, then for you these behaviors might be amoral.

In Nietzsche’s quote, power seems to be the goal, which would make exploitation and oppression right, or at the very least permissible, if necessary to achieve that end. I also view empowerment as the ultimate goal of morality; however, I believe that the ultimate realization of this goal comes by expanding my self-identity to include the people in my life. Eventually, my understanding and connection could come to encompass the entire universe and then I (or more appropriately ‘we’) would be totally empowered.

I will expound more on the ethical system I subscribe to, enlightened egoism, in a future post.

Namaste.

This was one of my more successful challenges. Not only did I beast mode through it, but I plan on mostly continuing the challenge going forward. With the chronic pain I suffer from, consistent extensive exercise is not just good for me, but necessary for my sanity. Without further ado, here is what I learned from the experience:

• Don’t give up after a failed start. The month started not that long after I fell off the wagon with regards to my TV/movie abstinence. I wasn’t in the best spot mentally. The first 2 days of the challenge I didn’t follow it at all. It would have been easy at this point to just scrap the whole thing. However, one of the biggest skills I have been practicing is choosing middle path. 28 days is not a month (unless it’s February) but it is still an accomplishment, and much much better than nothing.
• It’s not everything, but it is enough. Two hours of daily physical conditioning doesn’t remotely cover all the physical therapy regimens I’ve been given for my back over the years. It also isn’t enough time to fit in all I would like: yoga, running, biking, swimming, calisthenics, foot exercises, body rolling, etc. However, it is enough for me. I feel content with it. Everyone needs to find this point for their body and mind – for some it is 5 minutes, for others 4 hours. Find your sweet spot.
• Beast mode is uncomfortable and awesome. That is what makes it beast mode. As much as I love Bikram Yoga (and I do!), it does not put me into beast mode. However, pumping out 200 push-ups or cranking out 100 hyper-extension repetitions definitely does. There is nothing like the feeling of complete exhaustion mixed with sheer triumph. It’s amazing, but something I have to will myself into every time.
• Having an exercise partner is a huge plus. The last week of the challenge my sister Rachel was visiting. This gave me the opportunity to run and do yoga with her every day. What a tremendous blessing this was! I do like completing a yoga class meditatively in a dark room by myself sometimes or turning on solo beast mode. However, the added motivation, accountability, and energy of exercising with a friend is quite palpable.

What will I change going forward? Not a lot actually. As I said previously, the challenge was a smashing success. However, here are a few modifications I will make:

• Put more emphasis on exercising first and last thing of every day. I naturally fell into this pattern by the end of the challenge. The reason I started with a more segmented approach at the outset was to make the challenge seem less intimidating. Two hours of exercise in the day sounds like a lot, but a bunch of 10-15 minute segments doesn’t. However, once I got into the habit, my body started expecting and enjoying the process and it became easier to put the bulk of the responsibility at the borders of the day, while still saving half an hour or so to be interspersed as helpful throughout the day.
• Find connections that encourage fitness. This is for those days when I’m just not feeling it. The idea that you are accountable to more than just yourself can be very empowering when the self is deflated. When I lived in Houston, I paid $45 a month for a gym membership, which added a financial imperative to fitness. I don’t do this currently, so creating alternative incentives is helpful to keep me on track and healthy.

It’s amazing how awesome I can feel sometimes despite the chronic pain when I channel my energy towards fitness. My goal is to default to physical conditioning during times of stress. This is far superior to my recent default of binge-watching TV shows. Additionally, one of my Christmas presents was medical-grade gel toe separators, which have been super helpful for enjoying yoga and planks despite my drop foot.

Namaste.

This month’s challenge is inspired by the book “It’s Not Just Who You Know“ by Tommy Spaulding. I am woefully challenged in the relationship department. I have had genuine connections with family, friends, and significant others over the years, but rarely ever put in the effort to turn these connections into deeper, long-lasting relationships.

Honestly, in the past as much as I may have mentally understood the importance of relationships in my life, I did not viscerally value human connection. Also, relationship-building is never something I have considered myself skilled in accomplishing. This month I want to be proactive in building and maintaining healthy relationships.

Here are the parameters of the challenge:

• Learn and use people’s names. Outside of my immediate family members and niblings, I am horrible at remembering names. The first day of this month, I will create an Anki deck with names of people in my life that I go through at least once per day. I will input insightful information about them into the deck as I encounter it. During interactions with others, however brief, I will attempt to use the person’s name at least once.
• Write a note to one person each day. I will purchase a large amount of personal stationery that I can use to send notes to people. Until I have that, I will send out emails. The content of the note is not super important; I just want to get into the habit of sending encouraging notes to those in my life to tell them I care about them, they are important to me, or I am thinking about them.
• Find low-cost inspirational books. Giving someone a book can be a great relationship-builder. I will spend a few minutes each day reading and researching short books, pick a couple by the end of the month that I find inspiring, and order several dozen copies. Then, I will have a great gift ready to give anyone with whom I would like to establish a deeper relationship connection.

I am hoping this month’s challenge will jumpstart an ongoing habit in me of cultivating relationships whenever I have the opportunity.

Namaste.

Kant is a giant in the field of philosophy. As such, I am devoting an entire post to him. Though an interesting read, he is not for the faint of mind. Below are several excerpts from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

“For, as the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be without a system of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of error.”

I disagree with Kant’s notion that metaphysics can be “scientifically” determined in some way. However, I agree it is extremely unlikely that metaphysics will evaporate with increasing education and social progress. It will change forms, no doubt, but will always find a way to survive. What is important is to be meticulous in keeping my and others’ metaphysics separate from our physics.

“Dogmatism is thus the dogmatic procedure of pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers, and in opposing this procedure, we must not be supposed to lend any countenance to that loquacious shallowness which arrogates to itself the name of popularity, nor yet to skepticism, which makes short work with the whole science of metaphysics.”

One of my “10 commandments” is: Challenge uncritical thinking. This could synonymously be rewritten as Challenge dogmatism. However, as Kant says, this does not entail accepting radical skepticism or subjecting knowledge to the whim of the majority. Finding the path that avoids all these pitfalls is difficult, but must be attempted.

“In the science of transcendental aesthetic accordingly, we shall first isolate sensibility or the sensuous faculty, by separating from it all that is annexed to its perceptions by the conceptions of understanding, so that nothing be left but empirical intuition. In the next place we shall take away from this intuition all that belongs to sensation, so that nothing may remain but pure intuition, and the mere form of phenomena, which is all that the sensibility can afford à priori. From this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensuous intuition, as principles of knowledge à priori, namely, space and time.”

Unfortunately, I get lost quite frequently reading Kant, mainly because he uses a lot of terms having definitions with which I am unfamiliar. However, I understand and concur with the a priori deduction of space and time. After all, the law of non-contradiction, which, along with the law of identity and the law of excluded middle, form the foundation for logic, presupposes the concepts of ‘time’ and ‘space’ in order for it to be utilized.

“As to the intuitions of other thinking beings, we cannot judge whether they are or are not bound by the same conditions which limit our own intuition, and which for us are universally valid. If we join the limitation of a judgement to the conception of the subject, then the judgement will possess unconditioned validity.”

There are certain ideas, concepts, and principles that are so intuitively true to me, I take them as universal. However, the most I really can say is, that they are universal from my perspective. Obviously, I don’t know whether anything is intuitively true for everyone. To act as if something is, stems from either extreme ignorance or an utter lack of humility.

Namaste.

During all of my challenges, I have to keep reminding myself to find middle path. At the very least, this means that if I miss a day, I need to let it go and focus on starting afresh the next day (instead of trying to make up for it by adding more time the following days). It also might mean I need to restructure my challenge if it proves to be too much. Accomplishing less is always preferable to accomplishing nothing.

Things I learned from this past month:

• Hands-free reading. I love it! I prefer not having to physically hold a book when reading – carpal tunnel and all. Plus, it is better for my back. It’s difficult to read a handheld book ergonomically; if you don’t believe me, try it!
• Accessible highlights. It is very handy being able to browse highlights without having to flip through a book to find them. I don’t generally reread books, mainly because however great a book might be, there are so many other books out there – I can’t justify too much time on any one tome. However, I love skimming through the highlights I made; they encapsulate the most important elements or quotes that I gleaned from the book.
• Eyestrain. I would prefer using some type of paper display technology to cut down on eyestrain and give a more natural reading experience. If I intently read on my laptop for under 20 minutes, I am totally fine, but after that point I start noticing that reading becomes slightly more difficult the longer I stay.
• Interest. Reading philosophy texts can be one of the most exciting or most boring activities depending on the author and subject matter. I could do a book study on Hume’s Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and be totally engrossed. Augustine’s City of God, on the other hand, was probably one of the most pedantically boring reads I’ve ever endured.

How I would like to incorporate this challenge into my life going forward:

• Kindle Unlimited membership. I signed up for a 30-day free trial of Kindle Unlimited when I started the challenge. I intend to keep my membership at least until I finish with the philosophy books I elected to read on my challenge. After this period, I will reevaluate and see if I believe the $10/month cost is worth the service, or if I want to switch to borrowing from libraries.
• Screen display settings. I am not interested in buying an E-reader at this time. However, I will research the optimum display settings for extended reading on a laptop. Also, there are several apps I would like to test out, such as f.lux.
• Daily non-fiction reading. I want to incorporate some non-fiction reading (even if just for 5 minutes) into my daily routine. If nothing else, I will place some books on the nightstand next to my bed to read for a few minutes before I turn the lights out for the night.
• Engaging fiction on stand-by. Always having a couple fiction books on hand, both via audio and hard-copy, is a great way to productively use down-time. As I am already a science fiction aficionado, I will definitely start with more of that genre.

If you have read my latest blog posts, then it will go without saying that I will continue to incorporate intensive exercise into my daily routine. In Dialectical Behavior Training (DBT), there is one section of skills focused on distress tolerance. These are used when we are in emotional overload and need a way to reset and regroup. I would like to compile a similar arsenal of skills that I can use when in physical distress, which unfortunately, is fairly often.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
– Socrates

Namaste.

The third week of readings involved a lot more heavy lifting (philosophically speaking) than the first 2 weeks. I read some of the most prominent philosophers to this day: Descartes, Locke, and Hume, just to name a few. As a result, the excerpts may be more lengthy and less witty than the ones previously.

“I am, I exist—that is certain. But for how long? Surely for as long as I am thinking. For it could perhaps be the case that, if I were to abandon thinking altogether, then in that moment I would completely cease to be. At this point I am not agreeing to anything except what is necessarily true. Therefore, strictly speaking, I am merely a thinking thing, that is, a mind or spirit, or understanding, or reason—words whose significance I did not realize before. However, I am something real, and I truly exist. But what kind of thing? As I have said, a thing that thinks.”

– Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

I don’t subscribe to most of Descartes philosophical system. However, ‘cogito, ergo sum,‘ or ‘I think, therefore I am,’ is probably the only thing I will every assert to be undeniably true. Though somewhat of a tautology, it is a necessary starting point for any philosophical journey.

“If a man abounds in the fruits of the Spirit: charity, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, chastity, against which, as Paul says (Gal. v. 22), there is no law, such an one, whether he be taught by reason only or by the Scripture only, has been in very truth taught by God, and is altogether blessed.”

– Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

I feel quite confident I would get along well with Spinoza. His blend of rationalism with spirituality is refreshing to behold.

“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”

– Locke, Second Treatise of Government

This passage is the foundation of Locke’s views on property rights. I believe Locke’s view that every person owns their own body and the fruits it produces coincides neatly with the concept of bodily integrity. This is the highest value I believe a society should seek to preserve.

“I think it past doubt, that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree, and therefore none innate”

– Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding

I’m reminded of a qutote by Einstein: “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.” Anytime someone appeals to ‘common sense’ I inwardly roll my eyes. It is a conversational dead-end.

“The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavors to elude or avoid it.”

– Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Hume is my favorite philosopher to read by a mile. His writing exudes a pleasing mixture of clarity and humility. The more you learn, the less you know. This has certainly been the case for me.

“In all magistracies, the greatness of the power must be compensated by the brevity of the duration. This most legislators have fixed to a year; a longer space would be dangerous, and a shorter would be contrary to the nature of government.”

– Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

This is an interesting rule. In general, I’m against term limits. Greater political turnover doesn’t equal better representation. Also, it prevents good politicians from continuing their service. How long to set the length for various terms of office is a separate question, and this seems as good a metric as any for determining them.

“Teach him to live rather than to avoid death: life is not breath, but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, every part of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Life consists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living.”

– Rousseau, Émile, or On Education

A paraphrase of this would be the mantra I tell myself frequently: ‘Don’t aim to survive; aim to thrive!’ As a person who suffers from chronic pain, it is tempting to just focus on surviving the day until I can go to bed, get up, and start the whole process over again. But this isn’t living. Creating and accomplishing monthly challenges is one way I can put a spark in my days.

Namaste.