Time Capsule #175
Autumn.
Greetings,
I hope you are enjoying this Sunday afternoon.
Do not be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
✏️ Autumn
I haven’t much to write about today so I’ll resort to some thoughts about my current reads. Currently on the nightstand is Robert Massie’s biography of Peter the Great, and A Pocket Mirror for Heroes by the great Baltasar Gracian.
I have always had a fascination with the lives of great heroes. An early favourite of mine was The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle: I remember many elementary school days spent reading that book, lying on my living room sofa, not having a clue about the wealth I was inheriting. Reading about a great life, whether fiction or non-fiction, is an endless well of inspiration and motivation, and one of the finest teachers. There is nothing occurring today that has not yet happened before. From past lives we learn that circumstance is not the sole reason for greatness in character or achievement. We learn the importance of intuition and individuality. We also learn that no failure is final, and it is the courage to continue that counts.
As I wander through my own life, trying to make sense of the path taken and where on Earth its heading, great stories remind me that in this journey of a thousand miles, what matters is that today I walk 25 miles, then rest up and get some sleep. The best things in life take time to mature. As long as your compass follows your heart and not that of another, its only a matter of time before you become who you want to become.
Dominus illuminatio mea
💡 Food for Thought
Take care that luxury does not turn into necessity.
🔗 Sunday Best
Today, a recommended reading!
On Learning in Wartime
Delivered by CS Lewis to the students at Oxford, Autumn 1939.
There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affiars. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.
The fundamental defect of modern education is that it is too mechanical and does not inspire enough curiosity.
—Bertrand Russell
Yours Truly,
AT