Today is April 19 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is "are you living a good life?"
Navigating the chaos requires one to have a definition of the good life.
In Aristotle’s Way, author Edith Hall describes the ancient philosopher’s belief that becoming conscious of our skills, talents, and aptitudes (dynamis), and then using our resource to make the most of them (energeia) is the foundation of living a good life.
Artist Mandy Theis and author Ted Chiang exemplify living a good life.
Theis is the President and Co-Founder of The DaVinci Initiative that provides atelier training for contemporary classrooms. Her active, ongoing process ‘to become’ involves setting aside time each day to paint.
Doing so allows her to develop herself and devote time to teaching others about art. Award winning author Ted Chiang takes his time writing and has only published 15 short stories since 1990.
Fellow author Grady Hendrix said of Chiang "Right now as a writer, what you're told is: the best way to be successful is to be insanely prolific because the more your name is out there, the more every book is an ad for yourself. And then you have someone like Ted who just sits and thinks very carefully about what he's doing, and then he does it. There is something that's very counter-cultural about him that I think is important."
As philosopher John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche wrote “The self does not lie passively in wait for us to discover it. Selfhood is made in the active, ongoing process, in the German verb, werden, ‘to become.’”
Both Theis and Chiang take different approaches to living a good life. If you are not working toward reaching your unique potential, it is your duty to make things right.
Are you?