“What’s left to prized? This, I think–to limit our action or inaction to only what’s in keeping with the needs of our own preparation… it’s what the exertions of education and teaching are all about–here is the thing to be prized! If you hold this firmly, you’ll stop trying to get yourself all the other things… If you don’t, you won’t be free, self-sufficient, or liberated from passion, but necessarily full of envy, jealousy, and suspicion for any who do have what you prize…. But by having some self-respect for your own mind and prizing it, you will please yourself and be in better harmony with your fellow human beings, and more in tune with the gods–praising everything they have set in order and allotted you.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.16.2b-4a
Ryan Holiday says in the book The Daily Stoic “The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives–and the less free we are.” I couldn’t put it any better than that. I am happier today than I have been in years and I say that having halved my current income.
(Trying a different format today)
