Self-Dishonest

Daily Meditation #403–4/4/2023

As a former very serious alcoholic, I can assure you, this plus a few fingers of bourbon is a great hair-of-the-dog. But after a full night of expensive drinks and ruined (extra hours) of sleep…should we, really, add a grease soaked burger + more booze?

Today I slept in.

I usually get up at 3 am.

My Alexa plays Akira the Don’s “What Would You Be Like?”
She turns on my bedroom lamp (light is essential to the waking cycle).
I get dressed.
Go make a cup of coffee and turn on the kitchen light (more light).
Sit on the couch with the cat, the coffee, and say my morning prayers in a sort of meditative state.

But today — and some other days — I felt dog tired. I think I may still be fighting something, weeks later!

So, what did I do?

I laid on the couch, still in the dark, and slept…

Until 6am.

When I woke up, I certainly felt much better.
But I felt behind.

Now I hadn’t finished my morning readings.

I am running 100 miles in April and now hadn’t done my 3.5.

I hadn’t done any writing.

And so on.

Much of the morning as I scurried off to work, I thought “Maybe we skip the run and redistribute it across the rest of the days?”

However, after a few moments I knew that would be self-dishonest.

I got to sleep in an extra 3 hours…
I don’t also get to slack on my other responsibilities.
I don’t get to skip the run.
I don’t get to skip my Daily Meditation.

We make many little (and often needed!) concessions for ourselves. And they’re often necessary for us. However, we cannot allow one to snowball away into another, then another.

Just because we are hungover shouldn’t mean we get a donut and cheeseburger for breakfast…after sleeping past noon and calling in to work.

Just because we are taking a day off our diet doesn’t mean we get to eat an entire package of Oreos.

Just because we are on a vacation doesn’t mean we can blow $2000 in credit card debt at wherever-you-are’s Prada or Gucci.

It’s so very easy for us to grant one kindness to ourselves and then use it as an oiled shoehorn to squeeze us into half a dozen other undesirable behaviors.

Sleep in sometimes.
Enjoy a donut in your breakroom sometimes.
Take an extra rest day from the gym sometimes.

But be mindful of yourself not to let that one “sometimes” turn into 10 “sometimeses.”

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