Circle of Trust

I wish I’d taken more time to write out my thoughts for CoT (because then I’d be able to remember what I said better, and probably would have said clearer things), but here’s the gist of what I was aiming at.

I try to pay attention to ideas that come to me from multiple sources and traditions. One that spoke to me as I looked through some old notes was the intersection of the christian idea of obedience to God’s will, and the stoic ideal of amor fati, to love fate, or as Jocko Willink would reply “GOOD.”

James Martin, a Jesuit monk, writes “Embrace the events and facts of your life. To live life fully you cannot run from what is put in front  of you. Say “Yes” to the hard things in your life as well as the easy and happy ones.” It is easy to say “yes” to the things in your life when they are what you had hoped for, but it is much harder to say “yes” when things get tough, or don’t go our way. But now is the only time that is truly ours, and the circumstances we find ourselves in are the only life we are given. If we reject now and the circumstances that come with it, we reject the only life we have, and run the risk of failing to live our lives at all. To live well we must say “yes” to the conditions of our life even when they are hard. This is also at the heart of what the Q-source says about leadership, the ability to turn hardship into Grace. We cannot do this, we cannot lead, if we are resentful or resist the conditions of our lives. Love fate, embrace now with all its hardship, and do the next right thing with Joy.