Discipline is Freedom

Daily Meditation — 4/18/2022

As children, you threw fits.

“I want candy for dinner!”
“I want to stay up all night playing video games!”
“I’ll eat ice cream whenever I want when I grow up!”

When I grow up.

But, here you are as an adult, free to live as you please. Free to eat candy when you wish, to stay up later than you ought, and to sample all the ice cream…

And yet, you are miserable, wishing someone was there to slap the candy out of your hand to stop you eating it!

Total self freedom can be a ball and chain if you are without discipline.

How can you enjoy ice cream and sweets if you overindulge in them daily? Where is the contrast?

As an adult — and as a Eudaimonic — freedom comes in the ability to live with discipline.
Happiness is in knowing and embracing contrast.

Follow for daily philosophical meditations.

These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”