The Ethics of Moderate Living
“Moderation in all things, especially moderation.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Introduction
Moderation is not a sexy thing to promote. To live moderately is to know the meaning of the word “enough” just as well as an ability to state that something isn’t. The knowledge of when to work and when to rest. Knowing when to eat, and when to fast. All of this is crucial if one wants to live happily and peacefully. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I am or have always been a paragon of moderation myself. There were times when I overburnt, overdid, and even overdosed. Hopefully, those times are already in the past, but I still have to remind myself of the words of Epictetus:
“If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.”
Wants and competences
Part of moderate (yet not mediocre) living is to know the difference between the words “I want” and “I can”. Understanding one’s abilities and contrasting them with his or her wishes puts the person in contact with reality. Although daydreaming is fine and even necessary, if that’s all one does — it becomes a clear path nowhere. I might want to become an astronaut, a professional football player, or an owner of a great stock-exchange company, but if I don’t have the right expertise to achieve that, should I still hold myself eligible? Undoubtedly… No.
Might I worry about these shortcomings? I might, if my brain starts teasing me all over the place, but if we’re in a good relationship both of us can come to a conclusion…
Life has given everyone a different set of cards, not just in terms of nationality, gender, ethnicity, or race, but also of intelligence, IQ, ability, and competence. As much as I would like to become a Nobel Prize-winning physicist or a mathematician, the odds are quite against me. Now, there is nothing wrong with pursuing one’s love for science or anything else for that matter when you are way into your 50s or even your 90s, but to hope to become the number 1% of the number 1% in a field that others have spent countless hours developing their expertise seems to be a little bit far fetched, and maybe even a tad bit grandiose.
Is that a problem? Only if you make it so. Not everyone is to be Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Vasco de Gama, or Yeshua Hamashiach. If we were, these people would stop amazing us. Only the extraordinary transcend the norms of the ordinary, and it is fair (yet maybe unpopular) to say, but most of us are quite ordinary.
Of course, all people are different in terms of their biological, neurophysiological, or whatever other logical soup of chemistry, yet all of us have something in common — we live as we can with the set of skills and circumstances that life has handed us. Luckily, my cards are quite good. I’m a 29-year-old white fellow living in a fairly well-off country on the outskirts of Europe. While some people have not got enough fresh water, I enjoy the fragrance of rain and wet soil almost on a daily basis. Is that good or bad? As written in a haiku, translated by Reginald Horace Blyth:
“In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are
of themselves, some short, some long.” — Spring (1950)
But what happens when one starts to desire more than he can chew? The world of thought and the world of nature are not identical. Of course, one can argue, that thought is part of the natural world, just as earth or sky is, but it is hard to avoid the fact, that it can float absolutely disconnected from its natural surroundings, forming all sorts of relationships and identities. One second I can imagine myself as a prospering entrepreneur, another as a high school teacher, the third one as a monk, and during the fourth — I can be Christopher Columbus himself! Which one of these images is true? A Zen monk would hit me with a stick simply for asking such a question. Why? In a dialogue taken from the book Dropping Ashes On The Buddha, a student asked his teacher Seungsahn Haengwon:
“How can I understand myself?”
Soen-sa held up the Zen stick and said, “Do you see this?”
He then quickly hit the table with the stick and said, “Do you hear this? This stick, this sound, and your mind-are they the same or different?
The student said, “The same.”
Soen-sa said, “If you say they are the same, I will hit you thirty times. If you say they are different, I will still hit you thirty times. Why?”
The student was silent.
Soen-sa shouted “KATZ!!!”* Then he said, “Spring comes, the grass grows by itself.”
Our minds are always busy with image making, conceptualizing, and labeling, yet, as said by Jiddu Krishnamurti, the description is never the described. When we get entangled in the conceptual web of everyday thinking, we almost unconsciously start comparing that which “is” with that which “should be”. In doing that, we lose all contact with the fact of our true circumstances, and without knowing them we cannot live intelligently.
Intelligence and clear-sightedness
One translation of the word “intelligence” is “to read between the lines”. That’s an interesting way of looking, for if the lines might blind us, the truth will remain in the gaps. As the old saying goes, the truth will set you free! Do you believe that? I do. That may appear naïve, but it seems that if one is in contact with the truth, there is nothing that can surpass it in terms of importance. Truth brings a natural discipline to one’s daily existence. It shows us our true circumstances and guides our actions. Here I am not referring to “the truth of words”, but to the truth of honest and clear observation. One may say that such an observation is impossible. I suggest trying it. You might be surprised by its findings!
When the fight between “I want” and “I can” ceases, one clearly sees himself for who he is. Then such a person no longer has to prove to himself that he actually “is”. The facts themselves are more vivid than the interpretation. Interpretations, being part of wordplay, are not honest, at least not to the same extent as a silent internal observation is. If we are not afraid to observe ourselves honestly, maybe then we will come into accord with the cards that life has dealt us and learn to play them without feelings of resentment or bitterness. As written by an unknown author concerning the relationship between stoicism and poker:
“Once the hand has been dealt, you have no choice but to accept what’s too late to change, and you wish no longer for a more preferable hand but for the strength to play it the best you can.”
Living with moderation means understanding your cards and playing them right. There are times when you need to exert pressure, and times when you need to back off. There are times to move, and times to rest. Times to fight, and times to be still. Nothing is more saddening than not understanding one’s true circumstances and what they require from you. Unfortunately, all of us have been blind to the nature of the situation at one time or the other, but in limiting this blindness we can come upon a great capacity for both clarity and preciseness. And what do we value more than that?
There is no wonder that most of the professional sports that we admire require the previously mentioned skills: clarity, focus, precision. What they imitate is a hunt, and human beings are great hunters. A good hunter cannot rush, yet he cannot remain too stiff or passive. He has to know when to strike, and when to retreat; how to consolidate energy (be it mental, or physical), and how to prepare himself for that which is yet to come. By knowing his strengths and weaknesses he can calculate, and measure, but if he doesn’t see or understand his circumstances, he might fail the hunt.
To be in our best shape both mentally and physically we have to put limits on our expenditure of energy. Yet, reframing from living and turning all your attention inwards negates our physical existence and may delude one into nihilism. For that reason, one should concern himself only with the things that he deems as true and in accordance with his nature. Then, moderation is no longer an external effort, it is a natural process. And is there anything better than doing what seems natural in the best way possible?
“Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity.” — Marcus Aurelius
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