The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters
A category for stories on the random quotes displayed in the Deep Thoughts Section of the sidebar.
“Listen to lead.” I saw this phrase this past week while walking through the vendor area at the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Palm Beach Atlantic University had it on stickers and t-shirts. It caused me to pause for a moment. I’ve been on a contemplative journey lately that started with a challenge to consider some lessons from the Stoics. I’d been looking for the next topic; inspiration struck when I saw that sticker.
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“You may choose to look away, but you can never again say you did not know.” —William Wilberforce There are moments in life when we are confronted with a clear, morally unambiguous truth that strips away all our comfortable illusions. Wilberforce’s words aren’t just a condemnation of apathy but an indictment of complicity. Once you’ve seen injustice, silence is no longer neutral. It’s a choice. Ancient Stoics would have understood this. For all their restraint and talk of inner calm, the Stoics were not spectators. They believed in moral clarity and civic virtue. To live a good life was not to retreat from the world but to meet it head-on—with courage, justice, and integrity.
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In a recent sermon titled Trusting God in Life’s Transitions, my pastor, Rev. Magrey deVega, offered a line that I had to write down: “Actions without contemplation are unrooted, and contemplation without action is inconsequential.” For me, this landed in the middle of a personal storm. I find myself in a significant life transition. I’ve been warned of a likely layoff. My company is a federal contractor, and with contracts drying up, so might my role. While I’ve technically reached retirement age, I’m still eight months shy of qualifying for my full benefits age. I love what I do. I’m healthy and engaged, and I still have more to offer. But I’m also not as financially prepared as I wish I were. And I know—painfully well—the ageism that exists in the job market. It’s a lot to sit with.
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In a world that constantly shouts at us—“Buy this! Be that! Hurry up!”—It’s easy to lose sight of what truly matters. New trends, metrics, or moral panics are always trying to claim your time and energy. This raises a profound question: What is truly worth living for? The pursuit of the highest good is not simple. It demands something of us—sometimes a great deal. It requires saying no when saying yes would be easier. It calls for patience when the world rewards immediate reactions. It demands courage when fear would be much more convenient. But it is also freeing. When you let go of the need to gain everyone’s approval, avoid every mistake, or secure every possible outcome, you begin to live with more peace, not because your life is perfect, but because your intent is clear.
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That phrase—Memento Mori—means “remember that you must die.” It’s an old Stoic meditation, not meant to provoke dread but to awaken us… and remind us not to sleepwalk through our lives. The Stoic philosopher Seneca put it this way: “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing.”
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As the curtain begins to close on 2024, I find myself looking back on what has truly been a transformative year. This was my “health-focused” year, and what a year it has been!
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I want there to be hearts that beat a little lighter just knowing I exist and there are smiles that bloom like sunlight when I cross their thoughts. I want my presence to bring a little warmth, ease, and joy to others’ lives. Friendship, to me, is a sacred bond, a quiet promise to be the reason someone feels seen and valued. I hold onto the knowledge that my existence makes a difference, and in turn, I strive to be someone worth remembering.
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None of us is a smart as all of us. – Phil Condit This is pretty obviously a riff on the concept of synergy, “the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.” But coming from a guy with Phil Condit’s background, it takes on some real meaning.
Read moreLet your love be stronger than your hate or anger. Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little than to break. –H.G. Wells
Read moreBack to the Deep Thoughts Series. The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes of it. –John Ruskin
Read moreIt’s hard to believe, but Deep Sand debuted on May 24, 2004. I can’t believe I’ve maintained this blog for that long. Lot’s of blogs out there have been abandoned over the years. Here’s to the last four years of blogging on Deep Sand, here’s to the unbelievable team of developers and the open source community that make WordPress and unbelievable software platform, and here’s to four more years of raising hell.
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