Settle the War in Your Mind
Am I working with or against myself?
“Circumstances are what deceive us—you must be discerning in them. We embrace evil before good. We desire the opposite of what we once desired. Our prayers are at war with our prayers, our plans with our plans.” - Seneca
“I have always believed that when a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties. That man will become Grand Vizier or Pope.”- Casanova
The following is a story from Fables from Boccaccio and Chaucer by Dr. John Aiken,
“A goose who was plucking grass upon a common thought herself affronted by a horse who fed near her; and, in hissing accents, thus addressed him:
“I am certainly a more noble and perfect animal than you, for the whole range and extent of your faculties is confined to one element. I can walk upon the ground as well as you; I have, besides, wings, with which I can raise myself in the air; and when I please, I can sport on ponds and lakes, and refresh myself in the cool waters. I enjoy the different powers of a bird, a fish, and a quadruped.”
The horse, snorting somewhat disdainfully, replied: “It is true you inhabit three elements, but you make no very distinguished figure in any one of them. You fly, indeed; but your flight is so heavy and clumsy, that you have no right to put yourself on a level with the lark or the swallow. You can swim on the surface of the waters, but you cannot live in them as fishes do; you cannot find your food in that element, nor glide smoothly along the bottom of the waves. And when you walk, or rather waddle, upon the ground, with your broad feet and your long neck stretched out, hissing at everyone who passes by, you bring upon yourself the derision of all beholders.
I confess that I am only formed to move upon the ground; but how graceful is my make! How well turned my limbs! How highly finished my whole body! How great my strength! How astonishing my speed! I had much rather be confined to one element, and be admired in that, than be a goose in all!”
You say you want to win. You say you want to use every second you’ve got before the dirt covers you. You say you want to master your craft, help people, live a life so interesting it could put the renaissance to shame. Beautiful. But none of that matters until you answer the only question that does- do your fantastical plans agree with what you do on the daily?
The Stoics had a word for what you’re after- homologia, living in agreement with yourself. Where your thoughts match your words and your words match what your hands actually do on a slow Tuesday afternoon when nobody’s watching and the phone is right there. Epictetus put it plainly, you have one job- to keep your faculty of choice, your prohairesis, sovereign and consistent. Everything else is subsidiary. But most people are walking civil wars. They set an alarm for 5 a.m., hit snooze three times, then spend the afternoon telling someone about their morning routine. They meal-prep on Sunday and order pizza by Wednesday. They spend hours scheduling ‘deep work’ in their calendar and spend the block toggling between tabs. Their plans aren’t plans at all. They’re contradictions dressed in ambition, and the tragedy is they never sit still long enough to reflect and reorient their actions until it’s too late.
Aristotle called this akrasia- the interesting, human affliction of knowing what’s right and doing the opposite anyway. You know you should study. You scroll. You know you should stay present with the person sitting across from you at dinner. You reach for the notification. You know the third drink isn’t going to help anything. You order it anyway. This is what happens when your life has no organizing authority- when each desire operates on its accord, pulling you toward whatever’s shiny in the moment.
Dostoevsky understood this disease better than any philosopher. His Underground Man opens Notes from Underground with a cutting confession- "I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man." Then takes it back. Says he was lying. Then admits the lie was itself spiteful. Here is a man so paralyzed by his own hyper-consciousness that he can't commit to a single sentence about himself. He sees love offered to him- by Liza, a woman willing to trust him- and humiliates her, because caring would require vulnerability. And he can’t endure that. That’s what misalignment looks like when it festers- you’re technically breathing, technically showing up, but the version of you that walks through the door is a stranger to the version that made the plans.
So what does it look like when it works? You decide what sits at the throne- the work, the craft, the calling- and everything else arranges itself beneath it. Governed, not amputated. You still go out on a Friday. You still pour the whiskey. You still waste a Sunday doing nothing. But the indulgence answers to the structure, and the structure answers to the purpose, and when you wake up Monday morning there’s no wreckage to clean up. Seneca called this tranquillitas animi- a settled mind. Where you do what you say you’ll do, and your day actually matches what you said. Your pleasures serve your purpose. Your rest fuels your ambition. Your relationships refine the person you’re becoming instead of dulling them.
And when the alignment becomes wobbly- because it will- you audit. You ask yourself which promise got sloppy, where you’re giving excuses instead of doing the work, which sadness you took like a good boy instead of adressing it- until it curdled into rage and self-sabotage, which corners you cut because the short-term hit felt convenient than the long-term calling. Baldwin wrote that nothing can be changed until it’s faced, and he was talking about society, but he was also talking about you- about the private, painful work of looking at the places where your life just looks like you’re running your mouth. The misalignment is never the catastrophe. Letting it fester is.
This is what it means to live as one thing. Thought, word, and deed moving through the world like a single, deliberate force. The Greeks called it integrity. And it’s a war you win every morning by choosing, again, to be the same person in the dark that you are in the light. Now ask yourself, “Am I working with or against myself?”
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P.P.S: Most people loved the series on How to Deepen Your Friendships, Part I, Part II & Part III. Also check out the practical entries on How To Deal With Toxic People, How to Process & Overcome Grief & How to Prevent and Overcome Burnout. Happy reading!
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This is wonderful. Particularly “Integrity” as being “the same person in the dark that you are in the light”. And Baldwin “Nothing can be changed until it is faced”. Often we run from accountability and yet to do a daily audit makes us aware of how responsive we have been to our plans, hopes, dreams and their fulfillment.
I chose Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” for our Bookclub years ago and wish I’d had these insights. Very meaningful. Learned of “hyperconsciousness” and Aristotle’s “akrasia”.