This is the Shortcut to Ecstasy (Better than Drugs)

What remains except to enjoy life...so as to leave not even the smallest interval unfulfilled?

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

"Everything you're trying to reach—by taking the long way around—you can have right now, this moment. If you'd only stop thwarting your own attempts. If you'd only let go of the past, entrust the future to providence, and guide the present toward reverence and justice. Reverence: so you'll accept what you're allowed. Nature intended it for you and you for it. Justice: so that you'll speak the truth, frankly and without evasions, and act as you should—and as other people deserve." —Marcus Aurelius

It's crazy the lengths people go to secure validation, respect, happiness, peace. We're all guilty of it in some way: going to the gym to impress a girl, seeking political position to gain renown, blowing money on alcohol and girls to feel respected and desired, or going for multiple vacations in a year to enjoy life.

It’s interesting. We expend a lot of effort and resources to get a feeling one could get for free. However, since those actions are popular within the narrow limits of what it means to be happy, one does them even though they ruin our finances, relationships, or health. Even though, when done in excess and in continuity, they no longer feel good.

You can't blame anyone for those actions for it's a deep human desire to want happiness. They don't know any better. But in focusing on externals, a huge part of oneself goes largely ignored: the mind and its capacity to generate lasting happiness, eudaemonia.

This joy isn't illusory, but a fact you can base on us being rational beings. The capacity to think, imagine, have opinions, execute voluntary actions, and control our emotions is something animals don't possess, making us a superior and unique creation — closest to God.

When you're in tune with this idea, happiness is therefore possible even in the worst circumstances, because all you have to do is use whatever happens as a chance to practice a form of virtue, which can be justice, patience, wisdom, courage or discipline. In partaking noble actions, focusing only on what you control and being kind, you tap into an eternal spring of joy because you're doing what you were created to do.

You’re in harmony with your nature and the nature of the world.

This way of life can take the form of choosing to be courageous and going to the gym even if tired, choosing to be kind to a caustic individual, choosing to be disciplined in pursuit of the highest ambition, or working to serve others in the best way possible instead of angling for selfish gains.

But for it to work, you have to put this rational practice on a pedestal, learn to sacrifice instant gratification for it, and reflect, perhaps in a journal, for it in turn to create pleasure, contentment and raise your self-esteem. That’s all you need to enjoy your life — a feeling incomparable to sitting on a beach with a cocktail. However, this result isn’t why Stoics pursue virtue, we're indifferent to pleasure and outcomes; they’re merely a byproduct of this rational pursuit, although you can use the good feelings to goad yourself into more honorable actions.

Trust the shortcut you’re on. The path of practicing virtue at every moment. You’re on the right track my friend.

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"Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace." —Epictetus

"None of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness." —Marcus Aurelius

Nihil tendem est. That’s an attitude of mind where you approach the world with an audacious fearlessness enabling you to savour the most out of it. Be it in seduction, seeking a job, working on a project, you don't care about what other people do, say, or the results thereof, but only what’s in your control: to do your best and be kind, compassionate — loving.

This wisdom takes the form of focusing on the execution of your effort and skill to increase the probability of success in things you desire but whose outcomes you partially control. It's showing up determined, putting in the work to build relationships, study, or work — within a well thought out strategy, seeing those progressive actions as enough, and letting serendipity do its thing.

Viewing life with this lens, you'll find you’re comfortable, confident, and welcoming of whatever happens, good or bad (even sometimes wishing for it), because you can handle and grow from it. For as long as you're breathing, you can always express more courage, discipline, justice, love, patience and wisdom and find contentment in those responses. This obsessive focus on what you can do about any situation, on your retort to life also provides peaceful joy and grace in motion because you remove a big hurdle wasting your mental bandwidth: worrying about what will befall you in the future, the past, other people's actions and what they say.

When you have clarity and acceptance of who you are, what you desire and what your priorities are at this moment, then you'll move in harmony with your rhythm. You won't do anything contrary to your goal and you'll be more intentional with your time, aiming to get the most out of it.

When you understand the value of and are committed to peace, power, freedom, helping and radiating love to others - which you can get at any moment by practicing wisdom - as your only concern, "What remains except to enjoy life, joining one good thing to another, so as to leave not even the smallest interval unfulfilled?" as Marcus would tell himself.

When you're busy living, seizing every moment with determination to make it glorious through excellence in rational deeds, because you know you might die today or tomorrow — you can't not be happy.

It's also in minding your business, being aware of and steering the state of your soul in the direction you want at every moment, that you open yourself up to experiencing life in its fullness, beauty and ugliness, for it's all a chance to practice virtue and love, adorning every moment with a heavenly appeal, which is the mark of a god.

However, I’m not asking you to be a martyr, it's still wise to judge events and people's character and actions, to know the role they have to play in your life, the value they might have for you, and to develop tools to protect your emotional, spiritual, and physical health e.g assertiveness, awareness, and boundaries because progress is what you’re after, not fighting pointless battles.