The Right and Wrong Side of History

Daily Meditation 755–3/23/2024

In YouDaimonia, I have a common phrase I repeat here in our Daily Meditations (and try to remember in daily life, too!):

“Act in a manner consistent with the person you aspire to become.”

Put another way, “Act (today) in a manner consistent with the person you aspire to become (tomorrow).”

It’s a nice, straightforward way of reminding ourselves that every day is made up of about 10,000 little choices we make and that just a few “wrong” ones every day add up over months or years.

Suppose your daily calories needed to maintain weight is 2000 cal/day. If one day you go over by “only” 50, you may think “No big deal, it’s only 2.5% over…”
But if you do it every day for a year, it adds up to nearly 10 pounds of weight gained.

And going “just” 50 calories over is exceedingly easy!

So, our little motto helps us to recall those thousands of small “nows” every day and that, on balance, we need to try to make more better decisions than worse each day.

But, there’s also a “reputational” side of decisions we make as well. And sometimes, reputation is generational, ergo “the sins of the father” and how some family names have a rotten association. We all certainly…