Make it Good
Daily Meditation #149 – 7/21/2022
Make an hour good.
Then make the next one good, too.
Do this until your day is mostly good. Then follow suit the day after that.
Then string the good days into good weeks and finally weeks to months to years.
Chains are strong in their whole because they are strong in their parts.
A good life is not as simple or plain as a paint swatch.
A good life is much like a masterwork painting. It isn’t just an amalgam of colors, but rather the series of many — hundreds of thousands — small, precise and meticulously placed brushstrokes of all hues placed decisively, exactly where they are intended to go. They layer endlessly over one another and blend into the masterful whole.
One doesn’t toss a gallon of paint at a canvas and exclaim, “Voila!” but rather are specific and tedious, one stroke at a time, ten, twenty, one-hundred thousand times.
Up close it looks like nothing specific, but as you step back, the greater whole of those strokes come into focus.
This is Eudaimonia.
The dedicated and intentional effort in one’s behaviors — minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, fulminating into a grand effort propelling you towards an ultimate version of yourself which you may never attain, but regardless should pursue.
It is the climbing of the infinite mountain, one handhold at a time.
Eudaimonia is work.
But, the fruits of this work makes for a life rich with beauty and meaning not just on the whole but also in the parts.
Follow for daily philosophical meditations.
These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
