Monday Morning, July 1st

A philosophical start, both to the week and to the second half of the year (where did those six months go?!)

It’s humbling to think that, in a lot of important ways, we are no different to the people who lived thousands of years ago.

We have the same thoughts, wrestle with the same challenges, and learn (re-learn) the same lessons repeatedly.

Take Aristotle who was teaching in Athens around 340BC, over 2300 years ago. His ideas survive almost intact in books like “The Nichomachean Ethics”, which seeks to explore what it means to be a good and useful person.

Take the ‘Meditations’ of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, one of the three great Stoic philosophers. He wrote in 171-175AD, the best part of 2000 years ago, and yet his ideas about self-management, self-discipline, and being of service to your community are still fresh and pertinent.

Take Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography from 1771, in which he outlined the thirteen ‘virtues’ necessary to live a good life and to be a successful and decent human being.

Then come (almost) up to date with Viktor Frankl’s seminal book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, 1946, in which he describes his time surviving the horrors of being incarcerated in a concentration camp in the second World War and explores his profound insights into human nature and what it means to be a good person.

So, to kick off our week, here are four Stoic lessons, which Aristotle, Aurelius, Franklin and Frankl would all recognise as good maxims for us all:

1. Memento Mori
2. Memento Vivere
3. Amor Fati
4. Carpe Diem

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• Memento Mori translates as “remember you must die”. This is not as bleak as it sounds! Far from it … by remembering that we only have a limited time on this planet, it focuses our minds, so we do not waste the time we have. This leads us to do good and meaningful work, to be the best person we can be, and to be useful to our family, our friends, our community, and our world.
• Memento Vivere translates as “remember you must live”. This reminds us that every day is precious, that we should never waste it or take it for granted. It spurs us to think about the kind of people we are, the kind of people we want to be, and to live in a way that is true to those aspirations and values. We should not look for the meaning of life, per se, rather we should look for the meaning of our own life. We are each responsible and accountable for living our lives in the best way we can.
• Amor Fati means “love your fate”. To quote Viktor Frankl, “we have absolutely no control over what happens to us in life but what we have paramount control over is how we respond to those events”. To put it another way, every opportunity comes gift-wrapped in a problem.
• Carpe Diem means “seize the day”, which reminds us that we owe it to ourselves and the world around us to live each day to its fullest extent, to squeeze every drop of opportunity that we can out of every situation.

So, let’s all Carpe Diem! Have a fantastic week, a fantastic Q3, and a fantastic second half of the year.

Your time starts, now.