Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt:   Can I stop thinking I already know and learn something here?

I think one side effect of coming back to looking at Stoicism after many, many years had passed since I’d read Marcus Aurelius has reminded me both of what I already did know and just how much there still is to learn.  This is typical of me, particularly when returning to something I had studied in depth before but had left fallow for many years.  But when you are possessed with an insatiable curiosity like I am, there is always, always that openness to learning, to understanding better–and to understanding just what I do not yet know.  In the field of history, there is always a new archive found, a new archaeological find unearthed, or a new angle on an old question based on a different understanding of the data. Anyone who does not understand and embrace that cannot really call themselves a historian.  Or, for that matter, a scientist.  Knowledge advances.  So does understanding.

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A short update tonight because my Pathfinder game went almost an hour late.  We were engaged in a fight against a very powerful, exhausting lich spellcaster, and it was a battle of attrition in the end.    Between that and my earlier D&D game and about half an hour more work, I finished the final cat embroidery.  I am going to take a mental break of a day or two, listen to some stuff composed by a Reddit friend, and look to tackle making the vest that these five cat pieces will be attached to next week.  I have also started planning Shostakovich embroidery #7, which I may start sketching out in the next day or two.  I have two screen grabs from a film of him playing excerpts from the 7th symphony at the piano that I will be turning into a kind of diptych.

It’s been a long day, with more bad pandemic news.   I’m tired.  The slog continues.