Lesson 77: The path's never not in front of you.
When you drift off path, oh well, the path's still right there.
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Today's prompt from Ryan Holiday’s and Stephen Hanselman’s The Daily Stoic Journal caught me off guard:
Are my choices beautiful?
To me, this is honestly a little hokey. I wondered at first what, praytell, constitutes "a beautiful choice," before discovering that if your answer is anything but an instinctive "yes," your choices aren't.
Of course there’s value investigating why you’re not feeling so hot about them, but maybe more importantly is just deciding that your next choice — whether big or small — gears you in the right direction.
I said as much on twitter. A friend asked, then:
— and although I can’t suss out whether this making light fun of the hokeyness of all this shit (I know), I think the answer’s sure. Contentedness with one’s actions is the goal.
Any external rubric you measure yourself against is just a sign post. The sign post doesn’t care if you turn left or right. It doesn’t really tell you where to go, it just shows an expedient, predetermined path to a specific locale.
What is the path then to contentedness with one's choices?
Prioritize well 💀, then stick to your guns 💪, then walking that walk until there's no more walking to do. When you drift off path, oh well, the path's still right there. It's never not in front of you.
Craft virtuously.
Great to see you back posting my friend! We've never met but I enjoy following your work. I'm a big fan of Ryan's works, really enjoyed this post. Hope you keep it up! Cheers, Spencer