Stillness is the Key - Evaluacion - Maria J. Tapia Hernandez

STILLNESS IS THE KEY

STILLNESS IS THE KEY RYAN HOLIDAY

Published by Portfolio Penguin Random House LLC. New York, USA. 2019

P O RT F O L I O / P E N G U I N

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Holiday, Ryan, Author.

Title: Stillness is the key / Ryan Holiday.

Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin , [2019]| Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019018368 (print) | LCCN 201902767 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525538592 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525538585 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Quietude .

Classification: LCC BJ1533.Q5 (ebook) | LCC BJ1533.Q5 H65 2019 (print) | DDC 128/ .4–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/20198368 Published in the United States of America 7 9 10 8 6 While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication.

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Stillness is the Key. Ryan Holiday. Penguin Books Ltd.

The struggle is great, the task divine–to gain mastery, freedom, happiness and tranquility. –Epictetus

CONTENTS

Preface Introduction

xiii 1

PART I: MIND The Domain Of The Mind Become Present Limit Your Imputs Empty The Mind Slow Down, Think Deeply Start Journaling Cultivate Silence Seek Wisdom Find Confidence, Avoid Ego Let Go On To What’s Next...

PART II: SPIRIT

11 23 30 37 45 52 58 63 68 75 80

The Domain Of The Soul Choose Virtue Heal The Inner Child Beware Desire Enough Bathe In Beauty Accept A Higher Power Enter Relationships Conquer Your Anger All Is One On To What’s Next…

85 98 105 112 119 127 134 142 149 157 163

169 185 192 199 206 213 220 227 234 247 253

AFTERWORD What’s next?

Acknowledgements Sources and Bibliography

258 261 262 264

PART III: BODY The Domain Of The Body Say No Take A Walk Build A Routine Get Rid Of Your Stuff Seek Solitude Be A Human Being Go To Sleep Find A Hobby Beware Escapism Act Bravely On To The Final Act

PA RT I

MIND

THE DOMAIN OF THE MIND

T

he entire world changed in the few short hours between when John F. Kennedy went to bed on October 15, 1962, and when he woke up the following morning.

Because while the president slept, the CIA identified the ongoing construction of medium - and long-range Soviet ballistic nuclear missile sites on the island of Cuba, just ninety miles from American shores. As Kennedy would tell a stunned American public days later, “Each of these missiles is capable of striking Washington, D.C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or in the Caribbean.”

As Kennedy received his first briefing on what we know now as the Cuban Missile Crisis –or simply as the Thirteen Days– the president could consider only the appalling stakes. As many as seventy million people were expected to die in the first strikes between the United States and Russia. But what was just a guess–no one actually knew how terrible nuclear war would be.

What Kennedy knew for certain was that he faced an unprecedented escalation of the long-brewing Cold War between the United States and the USSR. And whatever factors had contributed to its creation, no matter how inevitable war must have appeared, it fell on him, at the very least, to just not make things worse. Because it might mean the end of life on planet Earth.

Kennedy was a young president born into immense privilege, raised by an aggressive father who hated to lose, in a family whose motto, they joked, was “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.” With almost no no executive leadership experience under his belt, its not a surprise, then, that the first year and a half of Kennedy’s administration had not gone well.

In April 1961, Kennedy has tried and failed –embarrassingly so– to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs. Just a few months later, he was diplomatically dominated by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in a series of meetings in Vienna.

(Kennedy would call it the “roughest thing in my life.”) Sensing his adversary’s political weakness, and likely aware of the chronic frailty he endured from Addison’s desease and back injuries suffered during World War II, Khrushchev repeatedly lied to Kennedy about any weapons being placed in cuba, insisting that they would be for defensive purposes only.

With is to say that during the Missile Crisis, Kennedy faced, as every leader will at some point in their tenure, a difficult test amid complicating personal and political circumstances. There were many questions: Why would Khurschev do this? What was his endgame? What was the man possibly trying to accomplish? Was there a way to solve it? What did Kennedy’s advisors think? What were Kennedy’s options? Was he up to this task? Did he have what it took?

The fate of millions depended on his answers.

11

The advice from Kennedy’s advisors was immediate and emphatic: The missile sites must be destroyed with the full might of the country’s military arsenal. Every second wasted risked the safety and reputation of the United States. After the surprise attack on the missiles, a fullscale invasion of Cuba by American troops would need to follow. This, they said, was not only more than justified by the actions of the USSR and Cuba, but it was Kennedy’s only option.

Their logic was both primal and satisfying: Aggression must be met with aggression. Tit replied with tat.

The only problem was that their logic turned out to be wrong, no one would be around to account for their mistake. Because everyone would be dead.

Unlike in the early days of his presidency, when Kennedy allowed the CIA to pressure him into supporting the Bay of Pigs fiasco, this time he surprised everyone by pushing back.

He had recently read Barbara Tuchman’s The Gun’s of August, a book about the beginning of World War I, which imprinted on his mind the image of overconfident wold leaders rushing their way into a conflict that, once started, they couldn’t stop. Kennedy wanted everyone to slow down so that they could really think about the problem in front of them.

This is, in fact, the first obligation of a leader and a decision maker. Our job is not to “go with our gut” or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong.

Because if the leader can’t take the time to develop a clear sense of the bigger picture, who will?

If the leader isn’t thinking through all the way to the end, who is?

We can see in Kennedy’s handwritten notes taken during the crisis, a sort of meditative process by which he tried to do precisely this. On numerous pages, he writes “Missile. Missile, Missile,” or “Veto. Veto. Veto. Veto.” or “Leaders. Leaders. Leaders.” On one page, showing his desire to not act alone or selfishly: “Consensus. Consensus. Consensus. Consensus. Consensus.

Consensus.” On a yellow legal pad during one meeting, Kennedy drew two sailboats, calming himself with thoughts of the ocean he loved so much. Finally, on White House stationary, as if to clarify to himself the only thing that mattered, he wrote one short sentence: “We are demanding withdrawal of the missiles.” Perhaps it was there, as Kennedy sat with his advisors and doodled, that he remembered a passage from another book he’d read, by the Philosopher Seneca, on his letters: JUDGING from what you tell me and from what I hear, I feel that you show great promise. You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another.

Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company. Be careful, however, that there is no element of discursiveness and desultoriness about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting • WISDOM It’s the meaning of philosophy: a love of wisdom. In Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, he wrote of the Stoics, “wisdom they define as the knowledge of things good and 12

evil and of what is neither good nor evil…knowledge of what we ought to choose, what we ought to beware of, and what is indifferent.”

Following having this knowledge, wisdom ultimately informs action. Viktor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” In that space is wisdom’s opportunity. Recognizing that space is the first step. That space is where we either take the lessons from our reading and apply it or we throw it out the window and act impulsively and irrationally.

Wisdom is harnessing what the philosophy teaches then wielding it in the real world. As Seneca put it, “Works not words.”

• TEMPERANCE Aristotle calls it the “golden mean,” which explains that virtue is found firmly in the middle, between excess and deficiency. Excess and desires are synonymous with discontent and dissatisfaction. They’re a self-defeating impulse.

Epictetus said, “Curb your desire — don’t set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need.” And Seneca said, “You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth?

First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”

Temperance is the knowledge that abundance comes from having what is essential. The Stoics often used temperance interchangeably with “self-control.” Self-control, not just towards material goods, but self-control, harmony, and good discipline always—in pleasure or pain, admiration or contempt, failure or triumph. Temperance is guarded against extremes, not relying on the fleetingness of pleasure for happiness nor allowing the fleetingness of pain to destroy it.

• COURAGE Epictetus was once asked which words would help a person thrive. “Two words should be committed to memory and obeyed,” he said, “persist and resist.”

It is the timeless symbol of Stoicism—the lone knight fighting a war they cannot hope to win, but fighting bravely and honorably nonetheless. It’s Thrasea challenging Nero, even though the challenge will cost him his life and fail to stop the man. It’s Marcus Aurelius struggling not to be corrupted by absolute power, to be a good man even in the face of Rome’s decadence and decline. It’s the Percy family—the great Southern Stoics—generation after generation: LeRoy fighting the Klan in 1922. William Alexander giving up bachelorhood to adopt his three young cousins. Walker Percy resisting the rising tide of racism and hatred that consumed his generation, trying to be calm and philosophical through it all, to be a quiet beacon of goodness through his writing. It’s Publius Rutilius Rufus, as Mike Duncan details in our interview, facing false accusations and an unjust prosecution to ultimately be a force inspiring change against corruption. It’s Seneca’s last words to a deranged tyrant, “Nero can kill me, but he cannot harm me.”

Each fight, even if somewhat futile, required enormous amounts of courage. Each required resisting the comfort of the status quo and coming to one’s own judgment.

Thrasea had to stick his neck out—literally—when he put a spotlight on Nero’s tyranny and lost it as a result. The Percys risked their place in their community and their own safety on 13

several occasions to stand up for the rights of their fellow citizens. Marcus Aurelius could have lost himself in oblivion and power, but instead fought a lifelong battle against himself, within himself, to improve and help others.

That’s Stoic courage. Courage to face misfortune. Courage to face death. Courage to risk yourself for the sake of your fellow man. Courage to hold to your principles, even when others get away with or are rewarded for disregarding theirs. Courage to speak your mind and insist on truth.

• JUSTICE Of the Four Stoic Virtues, Marcus Aurelius said justice was the most important. To him, it was “the source of all the other virtues.” After all, how impressive is courage if it’s only about selfinterest? What good is wisdom if not put to use for the whole world?

To understand the virtue of justice, we must look at Cicero—who agreed with Marcus that “Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.” We opened with Cicero’s expression summum bonum. But more than just an expression, in his time and throughout history, Cicero has been respected for living those words. John Adams said, “All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined” than Cicero. Thomas Jefferson said the Declaration of Independence was based on “the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”

While Cicero was a Roman Senator and did hold every important Roman office by the youngest legally allowable ages, he, and the other Stoics, weren’t considering justice in the legal sense as we often use it today. For them, it was in the much broader scope of our interactions with and duty to our fellow beings.

It was in De Officiis (On Moral Duties)—his comprehensive study and writing of the ethical system of the Stoics of his time—where Cicero first presented the four Stoic virtues.

Justice, he explains, is “the principle which constitutes the bond of human society and of a virtual community of life.” The lengthy continued description can be summed: • That no one do harm to another.

• That one-use common possessions as common; private as belonging to their owners.

• We are not born for ourselves alone.

Men were brought into being for the sake of men, that they might do good to one another.

• We ought to follow nature as a guide, to contribute our part to the common good.

• Good faith, steadfastness, and truth.

It is useful, he says, to consider what it means to act unjustly. Simple: anything that inflicts injury or harms another being. “For the most part,” Cicero explains, “men are induced to injure others in order to obtain what they covet.”

It is perhaps the most radical idea in all of Stoicism: Sympatheia—the belief in mutual interdependence among everything in the universe, that we are all one. It is emphasized heavily in all Stoic texts. “What injures the hive injures the bee,” Marcus said. Marcus’ favorite philosopher, the Stoic teacher Epictetus, said, “Seeking the very best in ourselves means actively caring for the welfare of other human beings.” And Epictetus’ teacher, Musonius Rufus, said, 14

“to honor equality, to want to do good, and for a person, being human, to not want to harm human beings—this is the most honorable lesson and it makes just people out of those who learn it.”

As the bestselling author, Robert Greene said in our interview with him about his new book The Laws Of Human Nature, “We are all the same. The Stoics talk about that. It’s logos.

It’s what unites everything together.”

Virtue is how we live happy and free lives. It’s not grandiose nor vague. The Stoics shun complexity and worship simplicity.

If we were to describe Stoicism in one sentence, it’d be this: A Stoic believes they don’t control the world around them, only how they respond—and that they must always respond with courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice.

Life is unpredictable. There’s so much we have no control over. That can be overwhelming and crippling or it can be freeing. Virtue is how we ensure the later. No matter what happens, we always have the capacity to use reason and make choices. We should always try to do the right thing. To let virtue guide us. It’s all that we control. Let the rest take care of itself, as it will with or without your consent.

We’ll leave you with this entry from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, “If, at some point in your life, you should come across anything better than justice, prudence, self-control, courage—than a mind satisfied that it has succeeded in enabling you to act rationally, and satisfied to accept what’s beyond its control—if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservations—it must be an extraordinary thing indeed—and enjoy it to the full.

But if nothing presents itself that’s superior to the spirit that lives within—the one that has subordinated individual desires to itself, that discriminates among impressions, that has broken free of physical temptations, and subordinated itself to the gods, and looks out for human beings’ welfare—if you find that there’s nothing more important or valuable than that, then don’t make room for anything but it.”

15

AFTERWORD

S

a L. Ecupica percerceps, manture notari perest am inatant urninam conempr iptilii porem forbis, commortus, pri poraedem tastrare cons ermisquam auctusa vis. Catum adem, stem reo, Ti. Atrudent, Cat facio intiort uastum in vis. Ati, que me virit? Gules!

Otis ex nossertia esta plicus re que publica peropor udefaccient? Go es occhus ium quo nostiae nestrec ientem prae nonve, nunihintium ellegerit, quo Catus sedefactum Patis demum averem veret iaes iam ac tum oritesc renihil iamdient, dius hicapec onsili in scriberetra nosulto ertilne storter ficasdampera rei pratqua mpratam ad rentilisse, Catiam tum viristorum tus, consi teberitur, culocaed rest? Ad concuper poenam ternici iam ficam quitissedi publices fintil hil vidertu mentervit, qua non nostum por hostus auci pre opulium essenihicum, popoptium eo estrevit. Sp. Ari perfent imilnem nonfica; huite foris endium.

Os ce nonsupp lissoltus aperevis or us consimmovem hala prem utus. Mae, num pecta num re, poreheb atilicien horit, quidet nicae omaioc tala culis. Decula deps, C. Ahae, Catum deris adhumedes re crum sus pere tu strecribunum te anditrum fec til venductum.

Catiam in habefau rnihiliendac videfectum publius hosus res intem que popon arbem hos fuit? Valis. Ti postro pectale stifes M. efacta, unu mantiere inihil hocrissilis re, ut defectuam Paturo nonstia culos, crei cultumus aucii conoximus Catissendam, nox se in silius ium, corentero viturnum similiente pul conscerem sis vidii clego erfecto et imilium tanum iam publintum iustiae a vivaste mquastil hoc, nossenatatum imur. Go vis. Etratodii sedium, viri, vit.

Nos prox nonsum, quamdie mulvid facis.

Simovenatis hae praedius? Quod intriss ertum. Iptis mei publiae et, ne tuam latartere me que con ta men publicatra? Quitam aur ate, co ut intiaes trionsum morehentius, su inatis? Hil ut vidientermis huctat, delicaelles inatum te di, Ti. Nostortiam in poponducer huidem vis Ad sid con inte me orimmo poendiem sedem. Verfentem popubli ciemplicae mandesis hacchuc rebus hocris. Rit, us.

Ala iam, sed fac moltum Romnici psessum hiciemo vestriu se hendit. Obusqua vir la L. Sena veri es fur, tertictem ex nonsupiondis con aut ium, cum inventum seribustrum ponlocu pioccit iliuspi mpermanum sulibus adhucitis etiqui poripio, num ficus cont.

Verit. Nostraverdi ius, is; niquem tatam. Ahalegit iam, nimus, des furectorat facrum renium in nos conculvirtio coruracit, consulto este etrum conemodium, quam ac re, modius creheme norum nox nos audepsentem senaritrum in tus, mod conternihica orum opubli et in sent grarivesciem eremo vertimi hilis.

Hucid Cateridius, is inihica ve, publica peritres ocaudem ocri is audente sidesen desimum tasteri tureste rfirtisuam nonscributem nos ende tiur. Imulis vivitalin virmis etrum inte crenimandem praedelude in tem etem iam aut conitan ditiuro publis. L. Sena veri es fur.

258

WHAT’S NEXT?

S

a L. Ecupica percerceps, manture notari perest am inatant urninam conempr iptilii porem forbis, commortus, pri poraedem tastrare cons ermisquam auctusa vis. Catum adem, stem reo, Ti. Atrudent, Cat facio intiort uastum in vis. Ati, que me virit? Gules!

Otis ex nossertia esta plicus re que publica peropor udefaccient? Go es occhus ium quo nostiae nestrec ientem prae nonve, nunihintium ellegerit, quo Catus sedefactum Patis demum averem veret iaes iam ac tum oritesc renihil iamdient, dius hicapec onsili in scriberetra nosulto ertilne storter ficasdampera rei pratqua mpratam ad rentilisse, Catiam tum viristorum tus, consi teberitur, culocaed rest? Ad concuper poenam ternici iam ficam quitissedi publices fintil hil vidertu mentervit, qua non nostum por hostus auci pre opulium essenihicum, popoptium eo estrevit. Sp. Ari perfent imilnem nonfica; huite foris endium.

Os ce nonsupp lissoltus aperevis or us consimmovem hala prem utus. Mae, num pecta num re, poreheb atilicien horit, quidet nicae omaioc tala culis. Decula deps, C. Ahae, Catum deris adhumedes re crum sus pere tu strecribunum te anditrum fec til venductum.

Catiam in habefau rnihiliendac videfectum publius hosus res intem que popon arbem hos fuit? Valis. Ti postro pectale stifes M. efacta, unu mantiere inihil hocrissilis re, ut defectuam Paturo nonstia culos, crei cultumus aucii conoximus Catissendam, nox se in silius ium, corentero viturnum similiente pul conscerem sis vidii clego erfecto et imilium tanum iam publintum iustiae a vivaste mquastil hoc, nossenatatum imur. Go vis. Etratodii sedium, viri, vit.

Nos prox nonsum, quamdie mulvid facis.

Simovenatis hae praedius? Quod intriss ertum. Iptis mei publiae et, ne tuam latartere me que con ta men publicatra? Quitam aur ate, co ut intiaes trionsum morehentius, su inatis? Hil ut vidientermis huctat, delicaelles inatum te di, Ti. Nostortiam in poponducer huidem vis Ad sid con inte me orimmo poendiem sedem. Verfentem popubli ciemplicae mandesis hacchuc rebus hocris. Rit, us.

Ala iam, sed fac moltum Romnici psessum hiciemo vestriu se hendit. Obusqua vir la L. Sena veri es fur, tertictem ex nonsupiondis con aut ium, cum inventum seribustrum ponlocu pioccit iliuspi mpermanum sulibus adhucitis etiqui poripio, num ficus cont.

Verit. Nostraverdi ius, is; niquem tatam. Ahalegit iam, nimus, des furectorat facrum renium in nos conculvirtio coruracit, consulto este etrum conemodium, quam ac re, modius creheme norum nox nos audepsentem senaritrum in tus, mod conternihica orum opubli et in sent grarivesciem eremo vertimi hilis.

Hucid Cateridius, is inihica ve, publica peritres ocaudem ocri is audente sidesen desimum tasteri tureste rfirtisuam nonscributem nos ende tiur. Imulis vivitalin virmis etrum inte crenimandem praedelude in tem etem iam aut conitan ditiuro publis. L. Sena veri es fur.

261

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

O

ne of the simplest and most accessiblee entry points into stillness is gratitude.

Gratitude for being alive, for the lucky breaks you’ve gotten, and for all the people in your life who have helped you. Each morning, I try to take some time to think about these very things, but for the most part, such thanks remain private. With this little space allowed ti me here, I’d like to thank everyone who helped make this book possible – my wife, Samantha, first and foremost. I am grateful for her guidance and support and natural stillness, which I learn from constantly. My son Clark, who went on many long walks with me as I worked out the words in this book. My sister, Amy, whose poise and strength as she battles cancer has deeply moved and humbled me. I am grateful to my agent a collaborator, Steve Hanselman, who helped not only with translations but the shaping of the idea. Nils Parker, who has been sounding board for my writing ideas for over a decade now, and Brent Underwood for all his help marketing and building my platform. Thank you to Hristo Vassilev for all his important research and fact-checking help.

Niki Papadopoulos, my editor, and the rest of the Portfolio team at Penguin Random House – thank you for all the work all my books. To the logos that brought all these people and factor together…

I should also thank my donkeys and cows and goats (for their lessons on being, nod doing), but there are too many to name. I’m also grateful for the chance to workshop many of the ideas in this books on Thought Catalog, Observer, Medium, and DailyStoic.com My final and most serious gratitude goes out to the thinkers and philosophers whose ideas make up this book. It would not have been possible without them, but more important, their insights and writings have made my life better. I’m grateful to the heroes (and villains) in the stories written here, as their all-too-human successes and failures both inspire and caution anyone in search of happiness, excellence and stillness. My own search is nowhere near complete, but their example has helped me make a few inches on a journey that – God(s) willing – is only just beginning.

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SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

My aim for this book is for it to be as lean and portable as possible. Since there is limited room here and no desire to leave any valuable source out, anyone who wants a bibliography for this book can email: hello@stillnessisthekey.com For those looking to do more reading on Eastern or Western philosophy, I recommend the following: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (Modern Library)

Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, by Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden (Hackett)

Letters of a Stoic by Seneca (Penguin Classics) The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics

The Art of Happiness, by Epicurus (Penguin Classics)

The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press) Buddha, by Karen Armstrong (Penguin Lives Biographies)

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This book was printed and published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division on Penguin Random House LLC, New York , 2019.

Hardback ISBN 9780525538585 Ebook ISBN 9780525538592 Serif Typeface / Baskerville / hardcover print Printed in Canada on acid-free paper 7 9 10 8 6 First Edition This book was designed by Caroline Cunningham