At the helm of Plato’s Republic was a Philosopher King. A lover of wisdom, and willingness to live a simple life, the Philosopher King is a seemingly impossible archetype, at least for a modern state. But what about for an individual? What if you ruled you well?
In these past two years, with the world gone mad, I have read more books than I ever would at any time in my life. The same goes for writing. I had read maybe half a dozen to a dozen or so books annually along side a regular devotional for my soul but as lockdowns spread across the world, one thought finally came to mind,
“I finally will have the time to read Don Quixote”
Cervantes prose helped keep things light in those first months of the pandemic. It wasn’t until the end of May, a statue of Cervantes in San Francisco was defaced by rioters perhaps thinking he was a conquistador. Ignorance has a way with irony.
My heart had continually broke for California in the years leading up to this moment but now the signs were a deluge. These cities once jewels of California’s natural beauty had become something else. In rallying cries for diversity, they had become divided and all parties seemed to forget the heritage, culture, and hope these places were founded on centuries ago.
In fact, it is damning almost no Californians even know what their state name means or why the Spanish named it so. That summer of 2020, my wife and I, left the state my family had come to almost a century earlier seeking opportunity and a better life. Prosperity was no longer to be found. The values of Francis and Claire of Assisi were long gone with only their names written on the map left in that Latin dialect.
There’s a scene in Theodore Roosevelt’s biography depicted by Edmund Morris that hauntingly captured how it felt leaving the state I once loved. As Roosevelt traveled by train from New York to Washington D.C. he passed through the center of Pennsylvania. Thousands of poor farmers and miners lined the tracks in every town. In Morris’ depiction: They would trade their hoes for hammers for a few dollars more wages, but it made no difference as they still could not afford life.
In California, your name meant nothing. All that mattered was the company and title on your business card. Yet what good was a title if you didn’t belong anywhere? Who cared how busy you were if you could barely afford today, and certainly not build for a future. Were they all going to be busy to the grave only to be forgotten forever, bankrupting posterity? It was not worth staying to find out.
Title-less and state-less I began to ask myself over these past years who did I want to be. What did I want my biography to read not just on social media but for the remainder of time. Contemplative Creative seemed to capture it. I wanted to marry the Spanish Mysticism I’d come to find as an antidote in this painful time with a new flourishing of creativity I was experiencing taking photos, producing videos, reading, writing, and playing music again.
I found myself drawn to histories and biographies. First, the ancients including Alexander the Great and Julius Ceasar, then through the truly dark ages of Spain’s oppression under the African and Arabic Caliphates, the emergence of the light in Queen Isabella, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the unparalleled anthropology and ethnography of Diego Duran in 16th century Mexico. From there every American founding father I could get my hands on right up through the 20th Century with Thomas and Isaacson’s “The Wise Men”.
For the first time in my life I felt like I understood in a round about way how we got here. And it wasn’t what they taught us:
History teachers “made us learn all the names and dates of the French and English kings while neglecting to tell us that one hundred years before the Pilgrim fathers landed in Massachusetts, the Spaniards were in California.”
Who do you want to be then? Not just the title you can put on your LinkedIn or how many people who you can tell you are busy, but who do you want to be?
As I continued slowly down this path I was calling contemplative creative I realized I was moving towards this idea of the Philosopher King. I had no school in Athens and no colonies in the Americas but I had a mind to cultivate and a body to work. I began to see myself as someone worth ruling. Not just a free man born on the Pacific edge of the west but through discipline I found I had a mind I enjoyed plowing like a field on a cool morning. I discovered I had a body that could play notes, and chords, and songs, and a body that could move, and invite others to move.
I believe from the darkness that was this pandemic a new renaissance is already arriving. The future belongs to the Philosopher Kings and Queens. Those content enough to cultivate gratitude on the day, and curious enough to conquer the unknown on the days ahead.
This project, Envio, literally shipping or sending, is focused on sharing this contemplative creative experience and the pursuit of being someone worth ruling.
This project is for me and you, and hopefully will be one of many of the great exchanges that will be recorded in your own history.
Health and Blessings to You in Abundance,
-Steven