Remember These Three Truths for a Great Life

Wisdom as Old as Time That Everybody Forgets

It’s hard to keep these three truths in mind. Society’s song is loud, and marching to the beat of your own drummer is no easy feat.

If you can hold on to one of them you’ll be miles ahead of everyone around you. 

You’re Wasting Your Life

Prestige, riches, acclaim, and distraction — the things humans chase are objectively stupid and inevitably ring hollow when acquired. 

That hasn’t stopped every generation from orienting their lives around them. Shiny things are siren songs that draw us in and lull our sense of time. Before we realize it our lives have passed us by and we’ve barely begun to live.

If we had 500 years on earth we could afford to waste a century, but our days are numbered, and the clock is ticking down. 

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”
― Poet Charles Bukowski

Luckily, it’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste so much of it on meaningless pursuits. This is the hopeful message of Seneca’s essay, On The Shortness of Life, which you should read. 

Every week I need to reorient myself to this truth. I fill in another square on my Memento Mori Calendar on Sunday nights so I’m forced to acknowledge how my life is leaking away. Every time I do, I ask if I’ve strayed into the ephemeral and the meaningless.

There’s no better clarity to be had. 

Your Labels Made You Stupid

Every label we let into our identity leaves us stupider. We can’t think clearly about what we identify with, so each label is another blind spot we carry through life. 

If you label yourself as part of a political party, a dietary approach, a movement, a religion, or a class, you’ll never think objectively about that label again. You can’t. Cognitive biases like confirmation bias creep in with each label. Once we identify with one, criticizing the idea means criticizing ourselves: the idea has become us.  

The slow accretion of labels are dead weight for the mind. They’re mental straight jackets that limit our adaptability. They also make us immoral. 

As Upton Sinclair famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

It’s equally hard to get a man to understand what his identity depends on him not understanding. 

Society will push you to label yourself, to join a team — don’t do it!

Purge your labels and get free. 

You’ll need loosely held working hypotheses to navigate life, but always say to yourself, “This seems most likely right now, but I could be wrong.”

There are only a few labels I’ve found don’t screw me up. “Human being,” is one. I sometimes utilize “Stoic” for communication purposes, but haven’t let it into my identity. But I have adopted the belief that “virtue is the only good,” a central Stoic tenant which doesn’t seem to have any downsides I’ve discovered.

If you decide any labels are worthy of letting into your identity, make sure you test them fully. 

You’ll Get Through The Next Thing Too

Anxiety can be our constant companion. Sometimes we recognize the emotion, but it can also bubble under the surface of our awareness, tainting every moment.

How will I get through this impossible workweek? Can I make ends meet? What will I do if I lose the person I love? When isn’t there a new thing to worry about?

But there’s an ever-useful reframe for this in every moment: our improbable resilience up to the present. 

All your life you’ve anxiously feared the future, wondering if you can make it through. And yet you have. Thousands upon thousands of worries, all overcome or proven unnecessary by the passage of time. 

Misfortunes of every kind may have befallen you, but here you are. 

What allowed for this improbable resilience? Your reason, which identified a path through the morass.

The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus liked to tell students to, “...reflect on how many things have already happened to you in life in ways that you did not wish, and yet they have turned out for the best. (Lectures, Fragment 27)”

That’s the funny thing about feared misfortunes — they often improve us. I wouldn’t trade away my autoimmune disease, though it's caused me so much pain and expense. It made me who I am — more resilient and disciplined than I otherwise would be. Why would I want to take that gift away from myself?

So when worry rears its head, threatening to steal your tranquility, have this simple refrain ready: “You’ll overcome this as you’ve overcome everything else, one way or another. What’s more, it will leave you better.”

Plan as required, then move on with life.