Today is October 19 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you take joy in the quiet contemplation of delicate thoughts, sights, sounds, and feelings?”
People who navigate the chaos like 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill battled through depression to appreciate the life’s smaller moments, not just titanic struggles. For two years, Mill suffered a nervous breakdown, a crisis, in his mental history, as he called it. Mill struggled with the self-imposed question “suppose that all of your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?”
In other words, if you achieved your life goals; could one still be happy? The 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once noted “life swings back and forth like a pendulum between pain and boredom.” To find his way out of this ‘pendulum swing between pain and boredom’ Mill discovered that reading the poet Wordsworth taught him “to take refuge in a capacity to be moved by beauty-a capacity to take joy in the quiet contemplation of delicate thoughts, sights, sounds, and feelings, not just titanic struggles.”
As Adam Etinson wrote in The New York Times, “I hope and suspect, that Mill is right about this: that we all have the ability to find some durable joy in quietude, normalcy and contemplation. In our personal lives, and in our political lives too, it would be nice if we could escape Schopenhaurer’s pendulum: to simply enjoy where we are, at times; to find some peace in the cessation of motion.”
Mill eventually took joy in the quiet contemplation of delicate thoughts to help him navigate the chaos. Do you?