9781945186240

12. Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you
can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up
and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead,
making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right.
(The best goal to achieve, and the one we fall short of when we fail.)
12a. To follow the logos in all things is to be relaxed and energetic,
joyful and serious at once.
13. When you wake up, ask yourself:
Does it make any difference to you if other people blame you for doing
what’s right?
It makes no difference.
Have you forgotten what the people who are so vociferous in praise or
blame of others are like as they sleep and eat? Forgotten their behavior,
their fears, their desires, their thefts and depredations—not physical ones,
but those committed by what should be highest in them? What creates,
when it chooses, loyalty, humility, truth, order, well-being.
14. Nature gives and nature takes away. Anyone with sense and
humility will tell her, “Give and take as you please,” not out of defiance, but
out of obedience and goodwill.
15. Only a short time left. Live as if you were alone—out in the
wilderness. No difference between here and there: the city that you live in is
the world.
Let people see someone living naturally, and understand what that
means. Let them kill him if they can’t stand it. (Better than living like this.)
16. To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.
17. Continual awareness of all time and space, of the size and life span
of the things around us. A grape seed in infinite space. A half twist of a
corkscrew against eternity.
18. Bear in mind that everything that exists is already fraying at the
edges, and in transition, subject to fragmentation and to rot.
Or that everything was born to die.