Weekend Engagement time! This time was hard to choose, actually. A few words to each topic, before I dive into the one I chose.
I think I got rid of all my very bad habits, thanks to the process that I'm going to describe. That philosophy of constantly working on myself subsequently led to an understanding of learning from mistakes. There is no warning I would give my 15-year-old me, because everything that happened has led to me being me. There are also no regrets regarding girlfriends for the same reason. And to the last question - I can't answer that without writing a book, I've been quite the dick too many times to count and re-count. And I learned from each time that I was a dick and am trying not to repeat that behavior.
Which leads me to my topic:
What does this quote mean to you and how does it apply to your life?
"What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality - Plutarch"
Plutarch goes a little further than regular Stoicism with his phrase. While Stoicism generally refers to working on oneself in order to accept the world as it is, Plutarch has a more hopeful approach to life, saying that by working on ourselves we can not only become better people, but also affect the reality around us, making it better in the process.
Since we live in a society, and not secluded from any interaction, whatever we do as well as who / what we are has an impact. We are all little butterflies, and up to a certain point we are indeed able to control if we create a comfortable breeze or a destructive hurricane. We won't change the whole world, but who we are, how we act does have an impact.
I adapted this way of thinking when I became a father. Stereotype, I know, but that was the first time that I really questioned myself, who I was and what I was doing. I looked at the world, at my friends, my community, and thought about how I wanted Lily to grow up. What I wanted her to learn, what values I wanted to transmit to her. It became clear that especially the latter depended much more on what values I represented than what I wanted.
I had to work on myself. A lot. As mentioned, I've been a dick many times, but I didn't want to get stuck on that, I didn't want that to be the father that Lily had to grow up with. That was one of the very few things that I could control for her, do for her. With everything that happened in the first 5 years of fatherhood, the frequent unforeseen separations from Lily, the illegal traveling, the fear of never seeing her again - all that drove me towards Stoicism. The pain was still there, as it's not about being emotionless or dead inside, but accepting that I was powerless towards many aspects of our life was somehow helpful. Like accepting suffering as inherent part of life somehow makes it easier to bear.
But Stoicism wasn't enough for me, either. Just accepting was not enough, I'm a little too idealistic for that. Working on myself, becoming a better person according to my values, is giving back to my community as well. Becoming a better friend, neighbor, baker, business-man, all that has an impact on the ones around me. A positive one, I hope.
And, of course, it makes me a better person for myself. I'm more coherent. I can defend myself, my values, a lot better as I'm not as hypocritical as I was yesterday, or the day before. I'll never live 100% in line with my convictions, life is just not meant to be that way, but each step is a little win, or at least it feels like it. As always, I will only know my real progress when the next crisis arrives, when the genius of a hole hits me again: "The genius of the hole: no matter how long you spend climbing out, you can still fall back down in an instant." - May Payne
