The Spirit Returns
Tomorrow’s event:
Collective Journaling. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
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December 17th, 2021
The Stoa was born on the 21st of March. The year was 2020 and COVID was announced to be a pandemic ten days prior by the World Health Organization. Nobody really knew what the fuck was going on. The sensemaking general gave a situational assessment that day, setting the spirit to talk about what is alive at our knife’s edge. I explained this spirit in the very first journal entry here…
The Stoa was a portico where philosophers gathered to discuss and dialogue. These philosophers were given the name Stoics because of this. I view the return of The Stoa not as a place to necessarily talk and practice Stoicism—although that will surely be part of it—but as a place for us to cohere and dialogue about what matters most at the knife's edge of this moment.
As Bonnitta phrased it to me, The Stoa is a child of the virus. I like Ole’s take on what is happening. Two things are spreading: COVID-19, a respiratory virus that has reset the world, and “corona,” whose etymology means “crown,” the symbol of sovereignty. The virus is inviting us to become sovereign. For myself, this feels true.
I have grown so much since I have been given this invitation; much of this growth has been documented in these journals. While I do not reveal all the details, as I am actually a pretty private guy, all my emotions are here. I am embarrassed of my writings, especially my older ones, and I am not quite sure why I am still journaling.
I was feeling funky when I returned to Canada. I am confused about what to do with The Stoa. Its second birthday is coming up soon. Its first birthday was called Maybe the End of The Stoa Party, because I was genuinely thinking of ending this thing, treating it as a sand mandala. I was oscillating back and forth during the months leading up to the party. I did not end it, but I kept everyone in suspense.
I admit the desire to end it is returning. I have such a weird relationship with this thing. I am thinking about The Stoa’s next birthday party, and if there is going to be one, I was thinking of calling it Probably Not the End of the Stoa Party, because The Stoa probably will not end on its second birthday. For year three though, something really feels right about calling the party The End of The Stoa Party.
There is something so poetically epic about that for me. There is this romanticism I have about letting something go when it is still beautiful. Something about three years also feels right as well. As of right now, this place is so intertwined with my livelihood, the thought of ending The Stoa invokes a sense of fear. The artist in me though is like: fuck it, brush this mandala away.
Maybe I won’t brush this away. I often worry that I appear too fickle. It feels like I keep changing my mind. I am so conditioned to think that appearing decisionally steadfast and hyperconfident in my life direction is the way to show up in the world. The following infamous interview question that HR professionals like to ask helps support this conditioning…
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
The correct answer to this question for everyone is: I do not fucking know. What a stupid question.
If you use your search engine to seek out advice from HR professionals, you’ll be advised to craft your question to signal a strategic alignment with the needs of the company you are applying to work for. Basically, you bullshit. But everyone is savvy to bullshit these days, so you also have to sprinkle your bullshit with some performative authenticity, to subtly signal the following: but yeah, it’s true, I still might leave anytime if something better comes along.
For me, the second-order bullshit feels worse than the first-order kind. I cannot bullshit anymore. The spirit of truth is too busy trying to burst out of me. But yeah, I should be careful with stating this, because that statement could be third-order bullshit. Perhaps I am just being extra careful here to signal to people’s oversensitive bullshit radar, which all the cool kids with meta-sensibilities have.
I do really desire to be trusted though. This is probably why I am so concerned about appearing fickle, and probably why I am still journaling here in front of you, guarding the shit out of my premises. The Stoa and these journals have an unfinished quality to them, they are unpolished, and hopefully messy enough to be beautiful enough.
The last time I was musing about The Stoa here was in the summer in an entry called Still Stealing the Culture. I did not like that entry. I actually really disliked it. It was my attempt to summarize the mission of The Stoa, through the framing of its “formula,” “game plan,” and “attractors.” I guess this entry might be a good onboarding to those just discovering this thing. But I do not care about good onboarding. I also do not care about what I think The Stoa’s mission is.
As of right now, I am erasing all of that. For a time I did like the idea that the spiritual battle cry of The Stoa was “stealing the culture,” which is a phrase John dropped at his first appearance at The Stoa, whom Akira The Don made a song about. My attachment to that phrase feels like goofy narcissism now. I do not want to steal anything these days, especially a culture.
Sure, perhaps this is another unconscious bait and switch from me, as a good thief does not come announced, but I do need to brush something away. I am called to brush away any framing I have towards The Stoa, as I am sensing a bunch of latent expectations has attached themselves here for me. The Stoa is my gift to you. It has also been a gift to me. The true art of giving and receiving a gift does not encourage a smuggling of dirty expectations with secret obligations.
Ah. This feels nice. I feel like the spirit can breathe better now. I sense it can flow through this digital colonnade again. I am excited to see what emerges.
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