Demand the Best for Yourself
If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endure.
It’s almost mid year. June starts tomorrow. Too quick, isn’t it? That’s a snippet of how fast life goes. We risk having nothing to show for our time here.
Some of us might have forgotten the resolutions and goals we set at the start of the year. Some of us might be feeling like giving up as the road isn’t as easy and glorious as it seemed in our minds. Some of us might have gotten side-tracked by urgent business. But that’s the nature of improvement. And that’s why I want us to turn to a timeless ‘pick-me-up’ to help us gather all the forces we can for the remainder half of the year. To remind us how much good we can still express from within us to tackle all that’s in front of us.
The passage below is one of my favorites from Epictetus, a slave who turned into a Stoic philosophy teacher.
It’s a reality check for all of us, a deft nudge reinforcing the idea that, as Marcus Aurelius would tell himself,
“We carry our fate with us—and it carries us.”
It’s also a chance for us to renew our vows to philosophy because we want to be great. Be healthy. Raise beautiful families. Have long-lasting relationships. Create wealth. Do impactful work — all this culminating into the happiness and satisfaction we crave deep down, Eudaemonia.
It goes like this…
“How long will you wait before…