Quest for 154

154, number of sonnets written by William Shakespeare.

My speculation is that a survey of opinions, from historians, will show that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of the 45 Presidents of the USA. Well, perhaps it could be George Washington. Either way, Lincoln will most likely be in the top two.

It's quite remarkable, considering that neither of these two men had much formal education. Lincoln in particular, had essentially no formal education at all. And yet, most will agree that his intellect and his eloquence to communicate clearly his thought were two of the characteristics that helped him stand out during his time, as well as throughout the history of North America, and perhaps even the world.

While lacking formal education, Lincoln liked to say that the Bible and Shakespeare were his teachers. Well, I guess that figures. If you have the intellectual capacity to digest these two, you could probably understand most things in human life.

Winston Churchill, perhaps the only man of the twentieth century that could match Lincoln's greatness, also had been a student of Shakespeare's works, actually committing to memory MacBeth.

Well, I am no Churchill, nor Lincoln, but perhaps I could try to play catch up a bit here.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decrease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substatial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl mak'st waste in niggardling:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Unfortunately, I do not really understand what this sonnet is about.

Speaking of Courage...

"Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover that they aren't so tough after all."

from David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"

"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.
Bran and Ned Stark, from The Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones

According to Aristotle, courage is a virtue that needs to be cultivated. Cultivating it requires decisions: deciding not to be afraid in presence of threat; deciding to do the right thing, even when it is difficult.

Perhaps the first step is to acknowledge the fear when we are afraid.

4th of July

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

- from the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 4, 1776

"The secret to happiness is freedom. The secret to freedom is courage."

- Thucydides

Of course, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, et. al. did not have google. Yet, I am certain that these Founding Fathers of the American Republic knew Thucydides. 

Courage, they certainly had. They bet with their own lives that liberty was more important than simple life itself. They would rather die fighting for freedom than continue living in tyranny. We all know, they won their freedom. But it wasn't free. 

In 1776, Washington was 45, Adams 41, Jefferson 33, and Madison 25. 25 years old! All were wealthy, and had stature. And they were willing to lose all of it.

Courage, indeed.

"Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind." -Emerson, from The Poet

I think Tolkien would have agreed, although, the philologist may have called this 'magic', and not simple genius.

Well, do we live in the world of decay (i.e. one that has seen its glory days), or are we really making progress in terms of overall human happiness?  Or does the question even matter?

Well, either way, time to be magical, or genius...

"Character makes an overpowering present, a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the company by making them see that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character dulls the impression of particular events... The great man is not convulsible or tormentable. He is so much that events pass over him without much impression. People say sometimes, "see what I have overcome; see how cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black events." Not if they still remind me of the black events, they have not conquered... The true conquest is the causing the black event to fade and disappear as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Circles

Interesting thought. Yet, I wonder, by this standard, simple indifference or another not-so-positive character quality can be misconstrued as 'greatness'...

Hello again, cyber world

I had spent the past few years carefully erasing and eliminating my 'digital footprint' (not a lot, mostly Facebook). While I did not have any real fear of Mark Zuckerberg using the photos and information I left on his online endeavor, I simply did not like the fact that FB was not upfront about their privacy policy.

Well, how the world has changed since. The government collects more data, but no one seems to care, let alone FB (who has gone public since I left them, and I even 'owned' them for a short while). Twitter seems to have become an important professional tool/outlet, instead of a place to post food pictures.

So, what will 'my own bag end' be about? Well, why don't we ask its occupant? Mr Bilbo, what is Bag End about?

"We'll share food and talk about the world and everything in it, dear! It's a place where adventures begin!"

Thanks for inviting us to Bag End, Mr Bilbo.