Bonus Meditation — 7/17/2022

I don’t often share personal bits in this daily philosophical blog.
I am a devout Christian — it is but one of many elements of me. Though the coming book YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing is intended for all types of readers seeking guidance in how to think about the world and improve their lives, it is not a religious book.
I had a great many thoughts and purged.
Here they are:

At church today we had the story from Luke about Martha and Mary. Pastor had his similar message, but I’ve been thinking about it, too. (When am I NOT thinking about things)

Martha is busy cooking and cleaning — make the home ready for Jesus’ visit.

Mary is sitting with Jesus, listening to him.

Martha gripes to Jesus — “Hey man — this isn’t fair. Don’t you think Mary should, like, totally help me? She’s just sitting around.”

Jesus tells her that she is concerned about so many things and that really we should only have one concern — which Mary is attending to: listening to the Word of Jesus.

I think this makes sense from a Christian standpoint, certainly: compared to Christ, there are no things worth pursuit. The world will decay and die and be reborn incessantly around us through our few decades, here.

Our friends, parents, and loved ones, too, will die. Our bodies are all doomed to rot and perish, and our homes to eventually crumble.

But the Word is eternal, and with it, the Way.

The story also makes sense from a secular standpoint, in my estimation.

There are many things — temptations, let’s call them — around us to exert a gravitational pull. Games. TV. Pornography. Drug and alcohol abuse. Cigarettes. Sleeping in lol.

But there are also “neutral” behaviors that don’t really have high value (on their surface). Laundry. Cleaning. Mowing. Cooking healthily. Going to bed and rising in timely ways.

All of these behaviors — especially the temptations — pull us from our “Eudaimonic behaviors” which I write about every single day. Eudaimonia is the pursuit of the highest possible version of yourself. Like a lily rising through the muck, filthy pondwater and weeds, to burst forth from the lakebed into a beautiful and symbolically powerful creation.

The temptations (and neutral behaviors) devour our time like nasty beasts, robbing us of time to exert behaviors that move us TOWARD that greatest possible version of us — that’s the secular version of Jesus’ “one thing.”

Us, unimaginably better off in every measurable and immeasurable way, and through it, more competent to make our world better through how we behave.

Blending the religious and secular, I personally aim to act in a manner consistent with who I aspire to become — kinder, wiser, financially stable, healthy, and deeper in my spirituality. For me, I act in a manner consistent with Jesus’ teachings as well as what I want to be in the world.

But, for all of us — even those who don’t partake in belief systems — there are always excellent teachings to be found.