All aboard

Here's a nice Zoom-facilitated conversation with Socrates Express author Eric Weiner. (Thanks for sharing, Ed). We'll be reading and discussing his early chapters next week.

 

I've enjoyed Weiner's previous books, in particular his happiness travelogue The Geography of Bliss (2008). “Maybe happiness is this: not feeling that you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.” Maybe "the greatest source of happiness is other people" (Sartre's "hell" and the wrong other people notwithstanding).

In Socrates Express's Introduction, Weiner mentions The Story of Philosophy by Will and Ariel Durant (1926). That was the first philosophy book I recall reading. Like Weiner's, my curiosity was piqued. And here I am today, anticipating another semester's opportunity to transmit the philosophy virus to a fresh crop of student subjects.

Weiner's first chapter skips ahead (past Socrates et al) to the Roman emperor/stoic Marcus Aurelius. Weiner says he and the emperor share an aversion to early-rising. But Marc's morning meditation inspires me, very much a morning person (I rarely fail to rise before dawn, when I most like to post my blog Up@dawn)... 

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."

That puts things in the right perspective, no matter how big a mess others may be making of their precious privilege. It reminds me to do better, to be a good meliorist--someone committed to doing what he can to make things better, and to be happy doing it. The emperor is thus for me a patron saint of the dawn.

And as Weiner admits, mornings set the tone for the day. For the life. Having a good morning is the best way I've found to get on with the work (at its best indistinguishable from play) of being human.

Another patron saint of morning was Henry David Thoreau, who Weiner and we will get to later. He concluded Walden:

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

So here's hoping the sun melts the snow and ice by Tuesday and we can finally get on with the dawn of our sluggish-to-start semester.