This is no easy enterprise since my children are no different from other children of their age (9 and 12) structuring time around the present-laden knots of Christmas, Easter, Birthday, Halloween. Luckily I do not have to start from zero. My daughter is taken to bed alternatively by my wife and by me each evening and part of the ritual is her remembering what the best thing that happened to her on each day was. We have extended the topic range now to mentioning all the good things that happened. If there are “not so good” things mentioned we talk about the chance of them happening again and whether she can do anything about it.

This  little “spiritual exercise” is very far from the Ignatian Examination of Conscience I was taught by Catholic priests and nuns or the other Christian soul-searching practices that teach the children how sinful they are. It teaches them (or so I hope)  the Epicurean joy of adding to our happiness account the mental pleasure of remembering pleasurable events and teaches them that there is something good  to be experienced each day.

The part about “what was not so good and what can I do about it in the future?” might seem to be more in the Stoic and modern motives analysis culture tradition but we know that the Epicurean communities spent  considerable time trying to improve themselves and each other by practicing how to speak honestly even when telling your mind might imply the risk of retaliation by someone stronger (parrhesia) and this practice must have been very much like what we do today in self-improvement life coaching or stress-communication training.

Now all I have to do is to extend the practice also to my prepubescent son…

 My own (mis-?)understandings and (mis-?)interpretations of the Epicurean texts differ from Cicero’s, Porphyrius’s and others’ (mis-?)understandings and (mis-?)interpretations

I agree with  almost all of Norman Wentworth DeWitt’s interpretations of the Epicurean texts (in his “Epicurus and His Philosophy”) and Martha Nussbaum’s interpretations of Epicurean psychological procedures (in her “The Therapy of Desire” ). In some specific issues I accept the pertinent interpretation of one or the other expert’s,  like Vincent Cook, Tim O’Keefe, D.S. Hutchinson, Victor Kioulaphides, Steven Ikier, Robert Hanrott, Tom Merle and some others.

For this reason I cannot speak of “Epicureanism” as such.

For me the Epicurean texts are less a raw material for interpretation or explanation than a source of inspiration and practical roadmap for a stress-FREE, truly happy life together with like-minded friends, using all the resources of modern science I have access to, especially pedagogy, psycho-sociology, organizational development and project management. I will go into details in my book “…live stress-FREE and happily ever after“.

 Epicurean texts and some of their interpretations – like e.g. Michel Foucault’s interpretation of Epicurean “parrhesia” ( a special form of giving feedback, see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhesia ), or Christoph Horn or Paul Rabbow’s or Pierre Hadot’s reconstructions and interpretations of Hellenistic philosophical exercises and practices, or the strong ecological interpretation of  Stephanie Mills’s  ”Epicurean Simplicity”  -serve as foundation and ingredients for my personal stress-FREEDOM guidance and are part of my reading of Epicurean stress-FREEDOM practice and stress-FREE lifestyle – as described in more detail in my  book under construction  “Epicurus reloaded”

For this reason it would be incorrect – and in my value scale: dishonest – to call my stress-FREEDOM guidance “Epicurean”. It is much more correct and modest to call it “mine”, i.e. “Galenian”, i.e. Galenios’s reading of Epicurus and of the world.