The Himalayahs

Daily Meditation #402–4/3/2023

Oftentimes, you tend to be looking upwards at the coming peak of whatever mountain you’re climbing, sometimes peering back at the struggles you’ve overcome.

You look up for the next handhold and strategize where you need to place your feet.

Over days, weeks, months, maybe years, you reach the peak of the mountain.

Marriage.
Losing 100 pounds.
Getting a major promotion.
Finishing a novel.
Quitting pornography or alcohol or drugs.

You reach the top and then the Ziegarnik Effect takes place — you forget that which you have finished, all the struggles, and kick up your legs to relax.

You stop trying so hard to impress your spouse. Get out of shape, stop dating, and allow boredom to enter your lives.
You stop eating well all the time, stop worrying about calories, and stop attending the gym with the same regularity.
You stop trying at work and get reprimanded (or fired).
You stop writing altogether and never edit the book.
You feel “one little drink” or “one little hit” of these addictions will be fine.

But, you cannot allow ourselves to relax, truly.
You cannot allow these positive changes to be phases

You must ensure positive changes are made into parts of your lifestyle and are not simply passing moments of your history.
You must realize the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next.

You will not sit on your deathbed and look back fondly on the 3 years you we “skinny and hot” ignoring the decades you allowed to pass where you were unhappy with yourself.

You will not hear the bad news about terminal cancer and remember the crystal clear few years of sobriety thinking “If only I had drank more. Smoked more.”

You won’t well receive the divorce papers from a miserable and bored spouse gladly remembering the thousands of days you sat on the couch watching reruns and hundreds of dollars “saved” by not having a fun date or two.

The top of whatever mountain you are currently climbing — cancer, weight loss, sobriety — is the bottom of the next mountain in the Himalayahs of your life!

The positive changes which you seek must be permanent lifestyle shifts and not phases, and you must attend to this mindset.

Growth is a state of permanence. It is a trajectory.

Eudaimonia is the Infinite Mountain.

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