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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Any nation that draws too great a distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
We become what we do if we do it often enough. We act with courage, and we become courageous. We act with compassion, and we become compassionate. If we make resilient choices, we become resilient.
I don’t have it all figured out. I still often balk at beginning what I have to begin. And one of the reasons I struggle is that I want to wait for the world to change before I begin. I can complain about . . . anything, and I can use the way of the world as a way to excuse my own cowardice.
When we accept what we cannot change—that some pain cannot be avoided, that some adversities cannot be overcome, that tragedy comes to every one of us—we are liberated to direct our energy toward work that we can actually do.
I like how Joseph Campbell explained this: “You can’t say there shouldn’t be poisonous serpents—that’s the way life is. But in the field of action, if you see a poisonous serpent about to bite somebody, you kill it. That’s not saying no to the serpent. That’s saying no to that situation.”
Writers on spiritual life, from Saint Ignatius of Loyola to T. S. Eliot, have spoken of “the purification of the motive” on the journey to wisdom. We don’t start with the motives of a wise person. (If we had them, there’d be no need for the journey.)
