I Was Wrong About Life

When I first decided to create this blog, I drafted up a short description of what I wanted it to be about. You can find that description in the sidebar on the home page. The first line in this description was as follows:

Humans have been around for around 200,000 years and still no one has figured out this thing called life.

I think I was fundamentally wrong in this assertion. And I think it’s important that I break down why I believe I was wrong.

The idea that no one has figured out how to live and furthermore that there is no correct way to live is a commonly accepted idea in our society. It goes hand-in-hand with the idea that there is no inherent meaning to life but rather that we can all invent our own.

However, after beginning to read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, I’ve begun to change my mind. I feel that there are in fact timeless and foundational governing principles that help one to lead a successful and happy life and some people have discovered and followed these principles.

The first of these principles and most impactful for me is to take personal responsibility. To stare yourself straight in the mirror and acknowledge the ugly truths. I looked at myself and said: “You’re fat, you’re lazy, you’re uninformed about a lot of things, you’re ungrateful to your family, you are unhappy because of what you have and have not done to put yourself in this situation.” Once these truths had been stated and accepted, I could go about slowly changing them.

Perhaps this is unpopular because it is uncomfortable and difficult. Perhaps the rigidity of guiding principles seems constraining and counter to the idea of individualism. But the truth is you cannot be an individual if you do not take individual responsibility. You cannot take on the world if you can’t even face yourself.

I haven’t fully grappled with these ideas yet nor have I finished the three books mentioned above but I will update my thoughts as time progresses.