Sprezzatura
Tomorrow’s events:
Collective Journaling w/ Peter Limberg and Co-Hosts. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. Every Sunday @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
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October 30th, 2021
We are in Portugal now. One week in Lisbon then two weeks in Porto. We’d like to go to some Scandinavian city after this, perhaps Oslo or Copenhagen.
It feels kind of surreal we are here actually. It felt like we were energetically pulled here. If you asked me about visiting Europe a few months ago, it would have seemed like an impossibility. I was sensing the “polarity spell” that had infected the world, especially Canada, and my body was often experiencing a degree of fear. Traveling during a pandemic (or a culture war about a pandemic) did not seem like a part of the possibility space for us.
Now on the other side of the processing, it feels like the right thing to do. As Daniel told me the other day, traveling right now, in the midst of this dark spell being cast, is a spiritual exercise. In all of my previous trips, there was always pre-travel nervousness, diligent preparation, and all of that stuff that makes you feel responsible before traveling. There was none of that on this trip. There was just a weird feeling, for not having any of those things. It all felt effortless really. We booked one-way tickets, made some accommodations, and I packed the morning before we flew out.
The Canadian airport was full of what strikes me as hygiene theater, with inconsistently enforced rules. Bullshit rules trigger me real hard. I did good brainstorming on the plane for the next three months for Beyond Self-Discipline, started reading Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and tried watching a few movies but could not finish any of them. The new Mortal Kombat movie is so shit. I cannot stand movies that have no character development, so I skipped the dialogue and just watched the fight scenes.
The Portugal airport was a crowded mess, making us wait two hours to pass customs. We arrived at our hotel, then rested our exhausted bodies in these super comfy beds, having one of the best sleeps in our lives. We woke up and wandered the rainy streets of Lisbon. We were hungrily (and pickily) looking for a restaurant, spotting this cozy-looking one, which we took a chance on.
I am glad we did because it weirdly turned out to be a Canadian-themed restaurant. The owner was from Ontario like us, and his dream was to open up a Canadiana restaurant in Portugal. The food was delicious. We had this liquor from the Azores that tasted like sex. Something felt spiritually connective about being there, reminding me that home is really a place never far away.
Afterward we spontaneously decided to watch the new James Bond movie, which we greatly enjoyed. I can see why they delayed it for so long, as it overlaps with some hardcore COVID conspiracies - a secret evil organization creating a bioweapon to be unleashed on humanity. It was great stuffing our faces with popcorn in a movie theatre again. We have not done this since COVID came online and there was a part of me that was prepared never to do this again.
When we were walking around a mall yesterday Camille mentioned how stylish Portuguese people look compared to your average Canadian. She said there is an effortless quality about the style. I told her about this Italian word I love: sprezzatura. This word was introduced by Baldassare Castiglione which he defined as: a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.
Europeans do have a nonchalant essence. There is a breezy quality in their style, grounded in a mature femininity/masculinity, conveying a wiser equilibrium with all the facets of life. I find this so sexy. I fondly recall really being into style when I was younger, even cultivating a fancy philosophy around a consciously considered way of appearing. I dropped this interest in recent years, settling on an unpretentious Canadian friendly “normie punk” look. This is superficial, and probably influenced by being in Europe, but I am called to put some more thought into how to look thoughtlessly stylish.
Why was I called to add that “superficial” preface just now? Hm. My first guess is because the main theme in these journals is me writing about being a Stoic during the meta-crisis. There is this explicit pressure that goes something like this: you are a serious-minded Stoic, who earnestly writes about rediscovering virtue, in the face of the vast array of existential risks that could terminate our species - there is no time to write about being stylish.
This pressure is even encouraging me not to send this entry out. Journaling about watching movies, drinking sex, and being stylish while pretending not to care about being stylish is perhaps not something that I should write about here. There is this nebulous judgement coming up. If I were to put words to it, it sounds like this: you are a hypocrite, an imposter, someone inconsistent and incoherent.
There seems to be a guiltiness in me enjoying pleasurable things. It is not a very European thing to be guilty about this. It feels more like a North American thing. It is like us North Americans are wildly indulgent, then wildly guilty about our indulgences. I am wildly generalizing here of course, probably spouting bullshit myself, another North American trait.
I’ll try to localize my comments to myself - there is this sense of guiltiness I have about indulgences, coupled with a lack of allowing myself simple pleasures, including ones that come from looking good. Thanks to Beyond Self-Discipline, I have been working out quite consistently, noticeably looking better in the mirror. Seeing this makes me want to keep going, fueled by the following thought: go get some six-pack abs.
Six-pack abs during the meta-crisis. That does have a nice ring to it. To stress test some of this guiltiness - I am not a motivational reductionist, as my reasons for working out are multitude - the desire for vitality and longevity, along with doing what I sense is the wisest thing to be doing, aka taking care of my bodily temple. Aesthetics do provide motivational fuel though, sometimes even stronger than the other motivators.
Perhaps a part of living beautifully is allowing myself to be inspired to look beautiful, so others can gain glimpses from afar of the inner beauty being experienced. This could be why this sprezzatura thing has this added element of nonchalance. You do not want to be gaudy about showing this off. You want to subtly show it off, with an aesthetic wink, that conveys that you care but that you do not want to appear as if you care too much.
I guess this is just another messily human thing for this Stoic to get into the right relationship with.
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