Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. ~ Aristotle
Always striving for education is the best insurance against losing your bearings, your perspective, in the face of disaster, in the face of failure. ~ Jim Stockdale
Our society has split the learned man from the physical man. We’ve pushed the nerd into a corner and the jock into another and positioned education as something for the classroom where we sit and recite. We’ve monopolized knowledge, charged a fee for its acquirement, and relegated its procurement to a strict and linear process.
All of this is wrong, every ounce of it. Socrates was a soldier before he was a philosopher, Seneca a wildly rich businessman all-the-while walking the streets of Rome in rags so as to not be dependent on his wealth. Epictetus was a slave, Marcus Aurelius an emperor, a leader of warriors.
As a kid it was athletics that created toughness, but as an adult I see that athletics can only make you tougher if you’re aware of the battle. But a book, a lesson, a meditation will stay with you deep in the recesses of your consciousness when you’re at your bottom as “insurance against losing your bearings, your perspective.”
It’s the mind, after-all, that is tough or weak. It’s the spirit of a man that can or can’t be broken. But without understanding how either work or lacking an understanding of what life is, toughness of the mind and the spirit can have a breaking point.
Schooling doesn’t help us understand, it merely helps us remember. We don’t come out of schooling – unless we’re lucky enough to have an imaginative teacher – with a better understanding of life, nor with the education, as Aristotle puts it, that will be a refuge in adversity. This education, the toughening of the mind, the insurance that Stockdale speaks of, is our own responsibility.
Real education, not mere tactics but the development of character, of will, of virtues is hard to find in schooling. In college a fluffy hippie tried to teach me the philosophies of the ancients having clearly endured little in his – and I say “his” loosely – life because he’d pursued it with little audacity nor bravery. Thus, I was turned off of philosophy as he positioned it not as it is, a refuge, a toughening of the mind and the spirit, but as weightless words that hold little value in the real world.
Of course, that isn’t what philosophy is. Much of it was born in stress; much of our understanding as humans was formed in intense pressure where many somehow find clarity. Machiavelli wrote the Prince from prison. If you want to know what leadership often takes from a man, read that book. Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy from captivity, Dostoyevsky was a prisoner, as was Socrates and obviously Stockdale.
The education Aristotle speaks of isn’t memorization; it’s preparation. It’s preparation for failure, for fear, for loss, pain, injustice, and confinement.
A LIFE WELL LIVED CANNOT BE EASY
In Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, Jim Stockdale says the following:
No two of us are the same, but to me the wonder of my life is in escaping the life Captain McWhirr had programmed for himself in Joseph Conrad’s “Typhoon”: “to go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, of terror.” And the author adds, “There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate – or thus disdained – by destiny.”
Life is in escaping a life where you skim over years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave.
It is not good enough to simply educate yourself – which is what you must do, rather than waiting for someone else to do it. You must live on the outskirts. You must test the waters of life, to feel pain, to see terror, to test your mettle against obstacles worthy of your effort.
Most, however, (myself far too often included in this group) exist in safety, in the normal, in what everyone else does and we’re edging dangerously close to that placid grave, ignorant of what life actually is and completely okay with it because we’ve acquired enough of the stuff we’re supposed to acquire and we’ve checked enough off the list of things we’re supposed to have done.
We haven’t broken down and persisted. We haven’t been pushed to the brink and survived. We haven’t learned, nor have we used said knowledge as a refuge.
As a culture we seek change. We want to change the world, to make it “better”, yet we spend very little of our time understanding it. We all know what’s best without actually understanding why we’re here. We make rules upon rules because we know what’s best for everyone, sucking freedom, liberty, and grit from our culture, making the placid grave the norm, and the life lived an absolute rarity. (Read This: Our Schools teach Our Boys To Be Pussies)
It takes incredible guts and self-awareness to even live today. But that’s what I ask of you, to make the very difficult decision to both learn arduously, but also to test that knowledge in difficulty. Train your body and your mind to toughen through pain so that failure in the future is something you can learn from rather than run from.
The path laid out for you is a trap. The rules set by society to guide you into a placid existence will remove your capacity for growth and understanding. Toughness and grit aren’t taught any longer because many feel they aren’t necessary. Nor is freedom, or liberty.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live. He’s a former 9-5er turned entrepreneur, a former scrawny amateur boxer turned muscular published fitness author. He’ll give you the kick in the ass needed to help you live a big, ambitious life.
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