Joy, if built on sand, becomes misery.

Imagine your dream home. The perfect layout. The best location. It’s exactly what you want and need for the rest of your life. Then, bam! It’s built. You walk inside, and you feel pure joy. But then something terrible happens.

A flood sweeps your dream home away. It’s gone.

Why? The home was built on sand.

Sand foundations can make once-significant sources of joy into significant sources of misery.

What’s Life’s Equivalent of a Sand Foundation?

If your joy is based on anything besides your perspective, anything outside of your mind, it’s built on sand. The primary attributes of a sand foundation are instability, change, unreliability, and outside your control. Sand isn’t meant to stay in the same place—by its nature of being small and fragmented, it is designed to be carried by forces like wind and water.

If your foundation is internal, it is solid and can withstand much. Let’s break it down into specific foundations.

Poor Foundations
Your wealth
Your status
External events
State of Circumstance (Prosperity, Crises, and everything in between)

Moderate Foundations
Your relationships
Your health

Strong Foundations
Your mind(set)

Since I began writing a book about resilience, I have been researching stoicism, as this way of thinking lends to remarkable resilience. One of the great stoic philosophers was Epictetus, who was around in 100 AD. Ancient wisdom is impressive because unlike most things, it can survive thousands of years. 

Epictetus’s book, Discourses, is a written account of his (verbal) teachings by one of his pupils named Arrian. I’ve been reading through it as I research the topic of resilience. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Discourses so far.

“Hey all you cool cats and kittens.”

~ Carole Baskin

Responsibility is healthy and good when you want it.

For the majority of my life, I think I’ve been seeking to distance myself from responsibility, because responsibility threatens freedom. Freedom, to me, has always been the most valuable “thing” a person can obtain. When you have complete freedom, you can live how you want.

But how you want to live is not always the best way for you to live. Left to my own devices and given freedom and resources, at best I’m bound to waste myself away in entertainment, and at worst, I could fall into areas like excessive alcohol consumption and gambling. Maybe I have more of a hedonic bend to my personality than most, but that’s the path of least resistance for the greatest reward.

They say that you never know the true meaning of something until you lose it. Growing up, my family always had cats. Then, I moved out and lost my cat access. I missed them greatly.

I’m writing a new book on the topic of resilience. Not only does it fit the current environment in the world, but it has long been an interest of mine. The formula for resilience seems to be a fascinating combination of emotional intelligence, strategy, perspective, and action. In my early research and analysis, this is one of the ideas I find helpful, especially in this current global environment.