This is All You Have in the Moment: A Transformative Perspective
Refuse to die in low spirits.
"Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing." — Marcus Aurelius
"Don't waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people, unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You'll be too preoccupied with what so and so is doing, and why, and what they're saying, and what they're thinking, and what they're up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind." — Marcus Aurelius
Humanity's strength is also its greatest weakness. We're endowed with a high capacity to think and process an unholy amount of information. But through this power, we also increase our chances of indulging useless ideas while deluding ourselves that we’re involved in the weightiest business.
We end up neglecting this moment, forgetting its beauty and plunging deep into a web of lowly emotions.
Caught between having high aspirations and allowing life to just happen to us, we end up wasting our sentient existence in undeserving sinkholes. We forget our lives are the sum of the minutes we lavishly hand over to mindless idleness. We fail to recall we don’t have forever to live. We don’t have time to keep fucking around.
Some people are troubled by the past so they keep ruminating — regretting what they did wrong, what people said about them, what happened to them, clouding the present with anger and resentment.
Others are anxious about future troubles or distressed by the yearning of a desire.
A bunch of individuals worry about what could be in other people's minds: if they think we're cool, if they're attracted to us, or what their intentions could be, and so one misses out on the fun of social connection possible at present.
To worry about the past or the future has a purpose. Those times help you extract lessons, get inspiration, strategize, or they give you a chance to make peace with them so you can act with excellence now. Prepare for a better performance in the future.
This is What to Think of Others
Thinking about what others think of you is mere guesswork. Sometimes, these thoughts are fictitious at best and it's foolish to believe them. It’s therefore good to be skeptical of the ideas your brain produces. Put them to the test. Question the basis of their apparent truth.
Even if people talked ill about you, it would be good to analyze it all to filter useful criticism from what isn't from the confident position of knowing yourself, your potential to learn and grow, and with the prudence to discern what’s good to concern yourself with, all else being indifferent.
A much better gauge of people's intentions, rather than assumptions, is to look at their actions. By anchoring yourself to reality, you withhold hasty judgment until you get concrete evidence, and you give the benefit of the doubt — refusing to let paranoia block your open, confident, kind, loving, and positive energy.
The Future is Now
This moment is all you have. And if you're not enjoying or at least not distressed by it, worried the good times will end or sad at how the bad times keep getting harder, then you're doing life wrong as you don't yet understand that you have limited time.
When you focus on what's within your control, what you can do, which means being content with your efforts in detaching from habitual but ineffective reflexive ideas and emotions, and assessing what the situation needs from you: amor fati and practicing wisdom as your rational nature demands, you'll attain unshakeable peace and will always enjoy living because you're letting the mind do its job to make the best out of the material accorded it by externals.
It’s in this flow, aiming for and actualizing virtuous actions as the highest good, that you get to rival the feeling a hedonist gets from his pleasures.
Some people may misinterpret limiting themselves to the moment, as not preparing for the future. But nothing could be further from the truth. It's good to set aside time to create a towering goal on the right adventure and a plan that would, for example, help you get the promotion you dream of, pass exams, or earn a living to take care of your people.
Then you must remember to live in the present and focus on working on the particular objectives that'll make this dream possible and, most vital, be content with the daily progress.
Peace and joy for the wise man is being unmoved by external circumstances and taking care of this moment by paying attention to detail, practicing discipline, endurance, and conscientiousness. For…
“There is no guarantee, no ultimate formula for success. It all comes down to intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase your chance of prevailing. When you do that, the score will take care of itself.” — Bill Walsh would say.
Having a routine and a standard of working complements focusing on the process because you can be certain you’re always doing your best. It also becomes easier to overcome distractions because you know where your well-being lies and what you're supposed to be doing at every moment to make yourself happy and proud at the end of the day.
It's through building a life like this that you won't need an escape, for reflecting on your wise actions will always leave you drunk in happiness and contentment. Of which I say get two more, on me.
Not to say it's not good to enjoy social company and a few drinks, but in having an inner source of pleasure and stability, you won't need, or even rely on, much outside of you, to feel good, confident and relaxed. You can lack them and still feel happy. And with time, you'll get the urge to view external pleasures as opportunities to practice moderation, which gives a double pleasure.
Self Love and Transcendence
By focusing on the moment, you get to love and accept who you are through awareness, understanding, and compassion for what you feel. To use it as a contrast from which you get to practice one or more of the virtues.
Cues of self-sabotage become a chance to exemplify your greatness by overcoming them. A chance to show your majesty as a rational being.
For in not being afraid of the unsavory parts in yourself: sentimental neediness, low self-esteem, an inattentiveness to details, timidity, some foolishness, and even the darker emotions like anger, envy, lust, pride, sadness — and looking at those emotions without flinching, avoiding or repressing them, but using them as challenges to practice wisdom and kindness, then yours is the world and everything in it.
With this openness, you'll even come to love your weaknesses with the backdrop judgment that they introduce you to your strengths. You'll come to enjoy the nuance of life as darkness and light.
Without needing to escape uncomfortable emotions, you'll be more authentic, creative, peaceful. You'll also come to accommodate others for their flaws and assign them a station in your life out of love, with justice, and without expectations. Not burning in hate while trying to change them.
In total acceptance of the world as it is right now, you won’t be surprised or disturbed by what happens. You’ll use it all to your advantage. With composure.
Memento Mori
There's no better way to help you focus on this moment intensely than thinking of your mortality. Memento Mori. The uncertainty of the hours, days, weeks ahead forces you to desire and strive to be happy and content right now. It forces you not to depend on a good feeling to do what you want, for you'll die waiting, and instead to tap into your rational resources of endurance and discipline to do what needs to be done through fiery courage, wisdom, and love.
With death by your side, you let who you are, your duty and what you control take precedence. You let the good feelings, what you don’t control, meet you well on the way to eudaemonia.
You also come to be independent of other people's actions for happiness and you learn to hurry to get your fix yourself as there's no time to waste. People flake on you? No worries, you have time to watch that movie you wanted by yourself (without their superficial appreciation of it disturbing you).
Besides unlearning helplessness, you come to accept that people have their lives to live and in the face of death it’s the ultimate act of love and kindness to support everything they do with their lives even if it means you won’t have them around.
Death also helps you clarify what's important to you, for with the sanctity of time, there are only hours for so much. You can complain, cry and feel sorry for yourself. Or you can grab every minute as your own to get the joy and contentment of implementing your agency. Of good actions and compounding progress.
And when you do succeed at implementing this perspective, which I know you will dear reader, don’t, as Marcus would tell himself, “like a fool…look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return.” Do it for yourself.
Whatever distraction you say yes to negates the possibility of what’s noble, beautiful — pleasing. Be ruthless in your pursuit for eudaemonia. Refuse to die in low spirits.