State of Mind = Peace of Mind

Daily Meditation 587–10/5/2023

There were two sons.
Their father was an alcoholic. He beat their mother, molested them, and was drunk and unemployed every day of their young lives until he died when they were just graduated.

Years later, one of the sons also became an abusive alcoholic and was put in prison for molesting his kids.

When asked why he did it, he said “Because my father was an abusive drunk who molested me.”

The other brother went on to found many multi-million dollar companies, marry a beautiful woman, and have a happy family.

When asked how he did it, he said “Because my father was an abusive drunk who molested me.”

Our state of mind — perception — determines our realities.

There is, unfortunately, a bit of a culture of almost…overacceptance of victimhood, now.

We all have bad things in our lives that make us victims, and what is “traumatic” to one of us is a goad to success for someone else.

The fable above demonstrates this.

Traumas aren’t to be “toughed through,” or ignored, certainly.

But we should be self-aware enough to try to manage our perceptions through them as we age and grow. We cannot let our past “unfortunates” dictate the present and future versions of the self.

Instead, we can meditate on them and try to mold them into fuel for good. To have them inform us of how we shouldn’t be so that we better know how we should be.

Life won’t ever be perfect for us. Bad — horrible — things are going to definitely happen.

But we don’t have to let them destroy us.

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