You Need Good Grades

Daily Meditation 543–8/22/2023

Tell me if you experienced this in school:

Your teacher “pounding the table” (hopefully metaphorically) each day about how you must “study hard” and “get good grades” such as As and Bs if you ever want to “be somebody.”

Your parents may have even drummed it into your head…

A near irrational fear of the importance of “getting good grades” so that you could one day secure a great job and a solid future…

Do you really need “good grades” for a good life?

The two things to ask yourself are these:

1. How often have your good grades (or bad!) honestly affected your adult life?
2. How often have that which was taught to you — algebra, calculus, chemistry, Shakespeare, art forms etc. — actually entered into your career and your daily life?

I would make a stab in the dark and say nearly never! Perhaps if you’re a literal chemist or engineer, you could be exempt.

This is not a Daily Meditation to “rail against” education — high school, higher, or otherwise — or to discourage studying…

But an invitation to “study” that which truly matters to forming a happy life.

As one of our YouDaimonia mottos goes:

Happiness is a BYPRODUCT of a life of meaning.

Will a career give you meaning? Maybe, but not likely.

Will maintaining good health?
How about forming strong, mutual relationships of positive merit?
Or being involved in a church or community or maintaining spirituality?
Maybe learning good budgeting, investing, and to try for financial freedom?

All separately, maybe not, but together — as The Four Tenets — you will find your life begins to overflow with ample meaning.

The pursuit of mindless “better, better, better” or “keeping up with the Joneses,” as they say, will only grind away at you — like the pursuit of those empty grades.
Got a B? Why not an A?
Got an A? Great? Now get another…

Meaningless chasing.

So, sure — if you’re in school taking this literally, then get good grades! Study hard! You’re there for that — but, for actual life, avoid that which will enslave you to a treadmill and to pursuing nothing.

Seek meaning.

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