Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.
This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.
Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.
The reflection in today’s Sunday Journal is one that reminds us of the power of focusing on quietly doing work that we can be truly proud of: living with purpose and creating a life that feels good.
Reflections
You have to disappear. You still go to work. You still show up. But you stop announcing every move and start building something that speaks for itself.
Disappearing means doing the work. It means doing the work in the dark.
It means building in private what you don’t need to prove in public. It means doing the work when no one’s watching.
You stop worrying about what people think and start valuing what you believe.
Because a life that looks good, or sounds good is nothing compared to a life that feels good and is good.
Source: Jay Shetty, Princeton University Commencement
Read the full remarks or watch the speech.
Quote
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” ― George Bernard Shaw, 1903
Image
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In the Iliad, the king of Argos, Agamemnon, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis to assure good sailing weather to travel to Troy and fight in the Trojan War. In Agamemnon, the first play of Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, murder Agamemnon upon his return home as revenge for sacrificing Iphigenia. In The Libation Bearers, the second play of the Orestia, Agamemnon’s son Orestes returns home to take revenge on his mother for murdering his father.
Orestes ultimately does murder his mother and afterward is tormented and chased offstage by The Furies, beings who personify vengeance.1
There’s so much to learn,
You are always so insightful. Your post reminds me that I heard a doctor from Yale on NPR this week talking about his research and book on how Americans have fallen into addiction to revenge, measurable addiction that ruins lives as sure as cigarettes and alcohol. It's on my list for my next trip to Barnes and Noble. Yesterday, I listened to a Think Big video with a lady who wrote a book called High Conflict where she really explains where we are in America right now. Trump has vilified his opponents so well that you cannot break the cycle of belief in lies in his tribe of discontented people. (about the 22 minute mark). Sad state of affairs but for sure we have to learn to eliminate revenge and high (toxic) conflict in high places and low ones too. I'll look for that book too. My list grows. I'm listening to Don Henley sing "Working it" while I write this. It also fits where we are.
"We've got a whole new class of opiates to blunt the stench of discontent in these corporation nation-states, Where the loudest live to trample the least. They say it's just the predatory nature of the beast. But the barons in the balcony are laughing, pointing to the pit. They say "Aw look, they've grown accustomed to the smell. Now the people love that shit... And we're workin' it." The whole album "Inside Job" is so good. His song Good-bye to a River reminds me of my pending (7th) appeal in a 2008 filed case about saving 102 farm families from five miles of illegal levee. High conflict to fight 17 years to harm your neighbors. We need words, not weapons, for healing our nation and world. Thanks for the Sunday reflections.