(My favorite quotes)
RULE 1 STAND UP STRAIGHT WITH YOUR SHOULDERS BACK
To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the
terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to
voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable
order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and
accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and
mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the
sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means
acting to please God, in the ancient language).
RULE 2 TREAT YOURSELF LIKE SOMEONE YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR HELPING
You must determine where you are going, so that you can bargain
for yourself, so that you don’t end up resentful, vengeful and cruel. You have
to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against
others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and
safe while you work and play. You must discipline yourself carefully. You must
keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can
trust and motivate yourself. You need to determine how to act toward yourself
so that you are most likely to become and to stay a good person. It would be
good to make the world a better place. Heaven, after all, will not arrive of
its own accord. We will have to work to bring it about, and strengthen
ourselves, so that we can withstand the deadly angels and flaming sword of
judgment that God used to bar its entrance.
RULE 3 MAKE FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE WHO WANT THE BEST FOR YOU
Here’s something to consider: If you have a friend whose
friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son,
why would you have such a friend for yourself? You might say: out of loyalty.
Well, loyalty is not identical to stupidity. Loyalty must be negotiated, fairly
and honestly. Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally
obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the
opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse.
It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you.
It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be
improved if they saw your life improve.
If
you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not
tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you
when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do
not. This will help bolster your resolve to do what you should do, in the most
appropriate and careful manner. People who are not aiming up will do the
opposite.
RULE 4 COMPARE YOURSELF TO WHO YOU WERE YESTERDAY, NOT TO WHO SOMEONE ELSE
IS TODAY
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass
of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek :) for your heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
(Luke 12: 22– 34)
Realization
is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention.
You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world. You are
negotiating, instead of playing the martyr or the tyrant. You no longer have to
be envious, because you no longer know that someone else truly has it better.
You no longer have to be frustrated, because you have learned to aim low, and
to be patient. You are discovering who you are, and what you want, and what you
are willing to do. You are finding that the solutions to your particular
problems have to be tailored to you, personally and precisely. You are less
concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do
yourself.
Attend
to the day, but aim at the highest good.
Now,
your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking
ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he
might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive
successfully…. Ask, and ye shall receive. Knock, and the door will open. If you
ask, as if you want, and knock, as if you want to enter, you may be offered the
chance to improve your life, a little; a lot; completely— and with that
improvement, some progress will be made in Being itself.
Compare
yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
RULE 5 DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN DO ANYTHING THAT MAKES YOU DISLIKE THEM
A child who pays attention, instead of drifting, and can play,
and does not whine, and is comical, but not annoying, and is trustworthy—that
child will have friends wherever he goes. His teachers will like him, and so
will his parents. If he attends politely to adults, he will be attended to,
smiled at and happily instructed. He will thrive, in what can so easily be a
cold, unforgiving and hostile world. Clear rules make for secure children and
calm, rational parents. Clear principles of discipline and punishment balance
mercy and justice so that social development and psychological maturity can be
optimally promoted. Clear rules and proper discipline help the child, and the
family, and society , establish, maintain and expand the order that is all that
protects us from chaos and the terrors of the underworld, where everything is
uncertain, anxiety-provoking, hopeless and depressing. There are no greater
gifts that a committed and courageous parent can bestow.
RULE 6 SET YOUR HOUSE IN PERFECT ORDER BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE THE WORLD
Don’t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of
your enemies. Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own
experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household,
how dare you try to rule a city? Let your own soul guide you. Watch what
happens over the days and weeks. When you are at work you will begin to say
what you really think. You will start to tell your wife, or your husband, or
your children, or your parents, what you really want and need. When you know
that you have left something undone , you will act to correct the omission.
Your head will start to clear up, as you stop filling it with lies. Your
experience will improve, as you stop distorting it with inauthentic actions.
You will then begin to discover new, more subtle things that you are doing
wrong. Stop doing those, too. After some months and years of diligent effort,
your life will become simpler and less complicated. Your judgment will improve.
You will untangle your past. You will become stronger and less bitter. You will
move more confidently into the future. You will stop making your life
unnecessarily difficult. You will then be left with the inevitable bare
tragedies of life, but they will no longer be compounded with bitterness and
deceit.
Perhaps
you will discover that your now less-corrupted soul, much stronger than it
might otherwise have been, is now able to bear those remaining, necessary,
minimal, inescapable tragedies. Perhaps you will even learn to encounter them
so that they stay tragic— merely tragic— instead of degenerating into outright
hellishness. Maybe your anxiety, and hopelessness, and resentment, and
anger—however murderous, initially— will recede. Perhaps your uncorrupted soul
will then see its existence as a genuine good, as something to celebrate, even
in the face of your own vulnerability.
Perhaps
you will become an ever-more-powerful force for peace and whatever is good.
Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this , in their own lives, the
world might stop being an evil place. After that, with continued effort,
perhaps it could even stop being a tragic place. Who knows what existence might
be like if we all decided to strive for the best? Who knows what eternal
heavens might be established by our spirits, purified by truth, aiming skyward,
right here on the fallen Earth?
Set
your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
RULE 7 PURSUE WHAT IS MEANINGFUL (NOT WHAT IS EXPEDIENT)
LIFE IS SUFFERING. THAT’S CLEAR.
There is no more basic, irrefutable truth. It’s basically what God tells Adam and
Eve, immediately before he kicks them out of Paradise.
Unto
the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened
unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded
thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles
shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; By the
sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since
from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis
3: 16-19. KJV)
Meaning
is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are
guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly
want takes any precedence over precisely that.
RULE 8 TELL THE TRUTH— OR, AT LEAST, DON'T
LIE
The truth springs forth ever anew from the most profound
wellsprings of Being. It will keep your soul from withering and dying while you
encounter the inevitable tragedy of life. It will help you avoid the terrible
desire to seek vengeance for that tragedy—part of the terrible sin of Being,
which everything must bear gracefully, just so it can exist. If your life is
not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an
ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and
rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise,
everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.
Tell
the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.
RULE 9 ASSUME THAT THE PERSON YOU ARE LISTENING TO MIGHT KNOW SOMETHING YOU
DON'T
So,
listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then
consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for
knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.
It
is for this reason that the priestess of the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece
spoke most highly of Socrates, who always sought the truth. She described him
as the wisest living man, because he knew that what he knew was nothing.
Assume
that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.
RULE 10 BE PRECISE IN YOUR SPEECH
If your life is not what it could be, try
telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in
nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate,
and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth.
That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.
Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was
determined by how much truth he could tolerate.
If you betray yourself, if you say untrue
things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak
character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will,
inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then
you will find yourself doing terrible things.
Confront the chaos of Being. Take aim against a sea of troubles.
Specify your destination, and chart your course. Admit to what you want. Tell
those around you who you are. Narrow, and gaze attentively, and move forward,
forthrightly.
Be
precise in your speech.
Rule 11 Leave
children alone when they are skateboarding
The spirit that interferes
when boys are trying to become men is, therefore, no more friend to woman than
it is to man. It will object, just as vociferously and self-righteously (“you
can’t do it, it’s too dangerous”) when little girls try to stand on their own
two feet. It negates consciousness. It’s antihuman, desirous of failure,
jealous, resentful and destructive. No one truly on the side of humanity would
ally him or herself with such a thing. No one aiming at moving up would allow
him or herself to become possessed by such a thing. And if you think tough men
are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.
Rule 12 Pet a cat
when you encounter one on the street
When you are going for a
walk and your head is spinning a cat will show up and if you pay attention to
it then you will get a reminder for just fifteen seconds that the wonder of
Being might make up for the ineradicable suffering that accompanies it.
