A Place Called Thumos
Hey beautiful people,
A few events are needing to be rescheduled, including Yancey Strickler’s session this Wednesday. If the events get rescheduled, you’ll find about it here.
Tomorrow’s events:
Collective Journaling. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
Collective Presencing. Every Tuesday @ 3:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
***
April 11th, 2022
There is a place I want to go to. A place called thumos. This place does not fuck around. It has that go, go, go energy. It feels wild in a flirty way, winking at you, encouraging you to tame it if you can. It likes the wind on the face, a muscly workout, and sweat dripping down the body.
Spiritedness. Vitality. Courage. A bridge between reason and desire. Or what Paul Lee refers to as the “unreflected striving of what is noble.” This is thumos. It is the impetus to show off what is most virtuous. Yes! Showing off your virtue. So hot. I want to go to this place. I want to live in this place. I want to move through the world and navigate reality with this primordial impulse moving through my body.
I even like how the word comes out of my mouth: thumos. Yeah, say it with me: thumos. It hits off the lips so nice, filling up the body with a certain kind of energy. No word matches this energy like the word thumos does. It was like the gods crafted the word to meet the energy and to invoke it. My whole body feels turned on when I say it. I like hearing other people say it as well. Perhaps this is why people are saying we’re going through a meaning crisis: people stopped saying the word thumos.
What is this thumotic energy? Where does it come from? Who cares! Why care about knowing such things. This need to know everything often comes from a neediness to control everything. Fuck that. Thumos does not want to be controlled. It cannot be controlled. Just say the word, and then say it again, and again. Thumos. Thumos. Thumos. Summon the primordial energy into your life, then see where it takes you.
It adds a certain kind of certainty, a mysterious clarity, a delicious zero fucks that whispers: fuck it, it is time for some timelessness, so get after it. After what? Who cares! You do not need to know. Just trust the thumos. Try a new way. A way that feels kind of crazy. The bridge between reason and desire does not have to be the most sturdy bridge, it just has to be sturdy enough to get you to the other side.
So, why am I focusing on thumos now? Well, according to my at-home antigen test I tested positive for COVID about two weeks ago. The first week was accompanied by headaches and fatigue waves, with lingering effects into this week. The symptoms were not so bad, but there was a good period where my mood dipped super low, depressed like. I felt like a loser. Everything was grey and insipid. All of my projects felt stupid and meaningless.
I was concerned that this low mood was going to last forever. I heard this kind of depression is a symptom of Long COVID. In this low mood, fuddling around for some inspiration, I asked myself what I wanted most? I wanted thumos. I wanted a life of thumos. That was it really. I do not care where this life leads me.
I want to wake up excited, motivated, called. I want to go to bed excited, motivated, called. That’s it. That is the good life. When I was in peak COVID funk I recalled Theodore Roosevelt’s story. Apparently he was accused of being a weakling when he was young. In response he committed himself to become a man of thumos, so he just acted as if he was one. He walked tall, thought strong thoughts, and did challenging things. Thank God for my acting background, because I know how to fake it until I embody it.
And that is what I have been doing the last few days. Being so tired of feeling poopy and moody, I willed thumos back into my life. I have been waking up extra early, working out until the sweat drips, then letting the cold water slap against my body. I did not look at any screens on Saturday - no phone, computer, TV - and went on a nice long hike with my wife. A shift finally happened. I visited a place called thumos.
I am not going to fuck around now. I am going to stay in this place. There are things I am being called to create after all.
***
Support The Stoa @ patreon.com/the_stoa