Libraries
Daily Meditation #176–8/17/2022
Humans are remarkably adept at creating narratives and stories.
The news is full of sweeping stories.
Films and TV captivate us with tales and characters.
We, ourselves, as individuals explain to others why we did or didn’t do something.
The last one of these go by another name:
Excuses.
You will either achieve something you set out to achieve or you will have incredible stories and narratives explaining why you didn’t.
Excuses.
But here’s the thing — the stories (excuses) aren’t even necessarily intended to convince the other party of anything so much as to convince yourself.
The world has dumped into our laps two of the single greatest options to affordably — even freely — improve our lives:
- Libraries
- The internet
Via either, you can learn to lay bricks, plumb, play a cello, speak Chinese or Czech, learn basic economics, investing, how to fix your communication, write a resume, code a webpage, find God, or scuba dive.
All for free.
And yet, we will pay a monthly fee to Netflix, Disney, and others to watch The Office for the 5th time.
Or worse — pay cable TV. No choice of what you watch and you literally pay them to advertise to you.
No matter all the incredible stories and narratives (excuses) we tell ourselves as to our stupidity, shortcomings, misunderstandings, physical health problems, and failures of the spirit…none can excuse ignorance in the modern world with these 2 almost burdensomely enormous free offerings.
You do not need to know how to understand or do everything.
You don’t need to be a polymath.
But ensure before you die you have no regrets as to how your time was spent. What you learned. Who you taught.
Very few of us can make any sort of meaningful legacy — it’s true…But that nor anything else is excuse to not aspire to be the greatest form of yourself possible.
…And knowledge is how that form is attained.
Follow for daily philosophical meditations.
These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
