esrosedotblog

WRITER'S CRAMP

I just finished addressing 110 invitations to my birthday party.

It is a chore to ask people to come celebrate something that I cannot even comprehend.

I am happy that I am going to be 70. Can you believe it?

There is not one birthday that I have felt bad about. Not one.

I am happy to be who and how I am as I am.

I can't ask for much more than that as a birthday gift, now, can I?

ONE MORE THING

I have also added, to my daily reading, the pithy paragraphs of one Marcus Aurelius; late the emperor of Rome.

I have read his meditations before.

I like them.

I even think that I try to live by them but not because I particularly got them from him.

His point of view is consistent with the other philosophies I have adopted.

He would say that one's philosophy is really the only thing one has.

The life of the mind can regulate all of life. Discipline it. Clarify the soul. And so on.

I am reading a new translation. The Emperor's Handbook. I can't tell the difference but I am sure that it is more accessible somehow. I am not going to do a line by line. I am just happy to have it.