One Year of Meditations
Daily Meditation #365–2/24/2023
One year.
It’s been one full year of writing these.
I know when we discuss Eudaimonia here every day together, I often talk about the concept of being here in the now, focusing on now being just a little better than yesterday and acting consistently with who you want to be tomorrow, but now.
And I have to reflect:
Do I, Lucas, feel that today I’m better than last year when I started?
Am I, myself, living up to the standards of Eudaimonia?
Financial Wellness?
Physical Wellness?
Relationship Wellness?
Spiritual Wellness?
And of course, the Narcissist inside of me that I’ve fought tooth and nail to defeat over the last few years pulls a face and says immediately and emphatically, “PSH, yeah of course. Obviously I’m better.”
However, I may agree in many parts — I certainly am in a very good place as a person compared to one year ago — but I also know that I can be so much better, as well.
I still suffer so many sins we all do. I still eat more pizza than I’d like. I still give into temptations. I still skip the gym on days I shouldn’t under “pretenses.” I still will buy something I may not need, even though I just did my budget.
So, no, I don’t perfectly live up to the standards of Eudaimonia I espouse daily.
But I certainly do better about the manner in which I live within our Four Tenets.
I may still suffer all the above temptations, but “catch myself” psychologically much more often.
And that’s what’s important.
It isn’t important for us to be “without sin” always, in terms of our journey of Eudaimonia, but to just be better.
Writing this the last year has been utterly transformative for me. So much so that I actually removed a “set date goal” for finishing the book, YouDaimonia, itself that all these Meditations orbit around.
For the longest time, I would insist “I’m going to really put my nose to the grindstone to finish YD,” and I’d work feverishly, thinking of the philosophy and trying to chisel it into digital stone for some-day-soon publishing.
But the last year has taught me:
It will be finished when it is ready to be finished.
These philosophies must simply be lived in the physical and psychological world, first, that they can be written.
And so, I will continue to write these.
They will continue to be 100% free for anyone to read, because it’s about service and helping those who desire better versions of themself, it isn’t about money or success or fame of the individual, me.
We are all of us, together, scaling the steep, treacherous mountainside of life — the Infinite Mountain, Eudaimonia. We all aspire to reach the summit, but in life, is there a summit?
Do you want their to be a peak?
Of course not.
Let’s continue this voyage together another day, another week, another year.
Will you continue to join me?
In closing — thank you, all of you, who have followed, subscribed or been kind enough to add your email. It really has meant the world to me seeing the subscribers climb to 1,500 these last 365 days.
I am eager and encouraged to write these another 365.
Thank you.
-L.A. Davidson
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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
