Crafting Personal Maxims
Do we? Should we?
My online dictionary defines the word ‘Maxim’ as:
“a general truth, fundamental principle, or rule of conduct”
Perhaps the most famous collection of personal maxims were those written by Marcus Aurelius, his Meditations. I’m really enjoying reading that collection now.
But, he’s certainly not the only fellow who crafted maxims to live by.
George Washington wrote out his Rules of Civility, copied in his early years from older works.
Benjamin Franklin displayed a particular skill at turning a good phrase with the many maxims he published.
So I wonder, as I’m reading the pagan Pope,1 would it be a healthy exercise for us to write out our own personal maxims? Our own personal codes of conduct?
In order to have something truly concrete to contemplate as we face life’s challenges.
Let’s chat about it…
In other news, like every other endeavor in the United States, Emeth is having a sale. The details are at the link below.
If you enjoy Emeth and would like to see it continue, I ask that you consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
One of the many titles held by Aurelius was Pontifex Maximus.
When I was a little girl my father used to read Marcus Aurelius to us at the dinner table. Both of my parents subscribed to stoicism.
I know stoicism is having a moment, but, it never worked for me and only made me alienated from own emotional being, which I find to be the truest part of myself.
But Ben Franklin did inspire me to keep notebooks full of quotes and poems that I found to be either meaningful, or inspiring in that, there was a quality that I wanted to incorporate into my own character.
As I grew into adulthood, I got busy, and spent many years in hot screaming love with what I thought might be destiny, as all of those quotes and poems got tested out in real life, and I began to learn who I really was, when the rubber met the road.
I often fell short.
Even so, along the way other adults, older adults, people I came to consider mentors, also passed on to me the things they'd learned that worked for them. Here are a few of them:
1. You can't get anyone to love you, really at all. Either they do, or they don't. And you sure can't get anyone to love you by giving them more of what they already don't appreciate.
2. People make time for the things they want to do, and excuses for the things they don't want to do.
3. Everyone you meet is a mirror for you, and you are also one for them. If you dislike them, they're showing you something that you don't like in yourself. If they like you, you're showing them something they either like in themselves, or would wish to have in their own character. Try and keep your mirror as clear as possible, and remember that we all are driven by our own insides. Often, when someone is ugly, it was never about you - it was about what's going on inside of them.
4. "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate". - Carl Jung
5. “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The cave you're afraid to enter holds the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell
6. Sometimes, you just have to put your head down, and hoe corn. - My maternal Grandfather, Grover Cleveland Gresham, Masonic Bother, Compass Lodge A.F.&A.M., Parkvillle, Missouri.
My dad had a maxim that he lived by and imparted it to my brothers and I. One that sticks in the back of my head in business, church, lodge, etc.
He was a Farmer, and a blue collar Electrician, working in a plant. The man could rig, fabricate, design circuits. Worked with his hands.
"Never trust a man who speaks for his bread"
I always took that to mean:
Lawyers, Preachers, Politicians...
I added to it:
"Trust is at it's cheapest, only once."