So I was reading some other post this morning and game across an interesting tidbit from Cadet. He had mentioned to another poster to review the Stockdale Paradox....an ironicly I remembered reading Stockdale's book in grade school (I loved to read as a kid). So I was familiar with what he had gone through....but unaware of the paradox.
So I researched the stockdale paradox and was quite moved. I think through his statement he really portraits that to really meet one's potential....one has to find balance between the truth and desire. Accept things as they are is how they were meant to be in the bigger picture. Then deal with it in a proactive manner.
As a scientist though....I had to research how Stockdale applied this to the trials he faced? How did this man come to a grand paradox? It was with that I discovered that Stockdale was a Stoic Classics professor.So with that....I had to research was stoic philosophy is.
I am glad I did. While I will continue the research (today's reading will be Marcus Aurelius's "meditations") the whole basis of stoicism reminded me of this board.
Accepting that things will work out as they are intended....even if the current moment is not what you want.
I just loved this quote;
"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine"
I read this, in our situation, to mean the journey of the MLC'er and LBS are intertwined in that we are human. The difference being like a graph. At the top of the graph is fun and at the bottom unhappiness/depression. When the situation is presented, one we have to accept as the harsh reality.....The LBS is at the bottom of the graph while the mlc'er is riding an eurphoric high at the top. What we do know is that what goes up, must come down and vice versa. Nature's way of finding that balance as Stockdale's paradox uncovered.
We have the choice to hang on to anger.....or forgive. Yet in the end what has happened is meant to be and it is ours to accept it and move on.
