Every age has had its sages. What is a sage? A sage is a person who practices wisdom and has reached a certain level of competency. The wisdom tradition in the West tracks its lineage back to Moses, Solomon, Socrates. The East gave us Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha.

John Gottman is the predominant guru on the subject of why marriages survive or fail (see, e.g., The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work).

He defines the primary causes of discord between couples as:

I’m a professional coach, and I have prostate cancer.

I became a coach because coaching makes sense to me.

Some of us have problems that do not require a mental health professional; we want help with goal-setting, mission statements, and life strategies.

I don’t believe in much, but I believe in good life strategies. Good life strategies improve lives, no matter what our religious denomination, or lack thereof. Good life strategies = wise living. One good life strategy is to adopt a mission.

There are basically two types of people: selfish and unselfish.

In fact, we all have two choices in life: (1) to be relatively selfish, or (2) to be relatively unselfish.

Most of us make that choice unconsciously.

Premises:

• Wise living is balanced living.

• Wisdom and balance go hand and hand.

• Most of us can divide our lives into categories.

In Susan Trott’s modern day spiritual classic, “The Holy Man”, pilgrims with problems climb a mountain path and stand in line for days to meet with the Holy Man.

My middle-class-faux-elegant dining room table now houses two laptops: a MacBook and a Dell, just to prove that I’m an equal opportunity wannabe nerd. Alongside sit my iPhone and iPad.

I wonder how many people think that Zen is an ambiance, a style of interior design, uber-spas, rich women’s bathrooms, stones and planks. Zen is a variation of Buddhism.

What is an “aphorism”? It’s a truth, subjective perhaps, but a truth; the better ones are cleverly, if not paradoxically, stated. A few classics:

“To traditional Lakota, humility was the one virtue that enhanced other virtues.” - Joseph M. Marshall III.

One great warrior speaks frequently of his accomplishments, walking with a swagger. Another great warrior remains silent, lets others speak of his accomplishments, his eyes always on the earth path.

Life is a series of ricochets. That’s one way of looking at it. Jonathan Haidt is getting some buzz because his current book, “The Righteous Mind”, made the NYT Bestseller list. Haidt is a social psychologist at U of Va.

I recently discovered Jonathan Haidt, Virginia psychologist and author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.

Being older means that you have been a part of history whether you like it or not. For me, it’s been interesting to watch America change from a manufacturing society to a service society.

Legal services have been around since pre-Roman days, but not even Marcus Aurelius had a Certified Financial Planner.

Buddha taught that reality is transient and impermanent.

Around the same time, on the other side of the world, before Internet, cell phones, Facebook, or e-mail, a Greek called “Heraclitus” was making a name for himself by teaching wisdom is short blurbs, including “the only thing constant is change”.

I am a strong believer in the law of compensation. Emerson was one of many sages who articulated it. It goes back, however, much further. The Taoists (600 BCE?) opined that the universe is made up of opposites.

Teleology ebbs and flows in popularity.

The Greeks, Aristotle, predominantly, believed that nature was teleological.

Teleology, loosely translated, means that everything in nature is programmed to move towards a specific end.

An acorn’s teleos is to become an oak tree.