3 Insights
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” ― William Faulkner
“On friendship and marriage: The best friend will probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is based on a talent for friendship.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“Someone often meets his destiny on the very road he took to avoid it.” — Jean de La Fontaine
What is hope? This is what I’ve been thinking about lately. What does it mean? Or, more specifically, what is the pragmatic definition of hope?
Hope is the mix-up of wanting something with the likelihood of it happening.
Arthur Schopenhauer is one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. He was born in the beautiful town of Gdańsk. Ironically, his work has been described as philosophical pessimism. If you give him a chance, you will find out how deeply refreshing many of his aphorisms are.
“We are always living in expectation of better things, while at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again. We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed was just their life…that is to say, it was the very thing in the expectation of which they lived. Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!” — Arthur Schopenhauer
The Goal is NOT the Goal
The path to misery is easy: aim to be happy. If you want to end up poor, try to get rich. If you want to think clearly, you don’t sit down and strive to think clearly. You go to the gym. You go for a run or a long walk. You read great books. You eat well.
“The goal shouldn’t be the goal,” Paul Skallas wrote. “The goal should be a by-product.”
Do you want to be successful? Chase success and you will miss it. Create the space to train both your mind and your body and success will follow naturally.
This is not a new idea. Aristotle wrote that happiness is the ultimate goal; yet it is not something that can be chosen or pursued directly. You pursue it indirectly, by designing a life with virtuous actions and moral excellence.
Reflections
What are some of your most ambitious goals?
How can you use this framework to achieve them?
The Real Con 105