On Working Hard

Last year, this time I thought I was working hard, but that was wrong. Compared to right now I was not in the least working hard. So now I’m wondering am I even working hard now, or next am I going to be saying the same thing next year? One characteristic of last year was that I’d set bounds on myself, like I need to go socialize now, or I need to take a day off, which is great and all but I don’t need to do any of that if I want to maximise working hard. There are things that have inversely proportional affects like lack of sleep and nutrition. Another reason for why I can work harder this year is that I have a stronger why. Last year I didn’t care too much about grades, the most important thing was about being employed. That’s kind of of how I approached life, how can I be employed and in that regard I was successful but truth be told, I’m not sure if that grind made me better or I’m not sure if that was a strong enough why to overcome myself, however now I have an even stronger why which is truly to understand the concepts presented so I can use them in my life. I can see myself having an even stronger why in the future. Once I have more responsibilities and maybe I develop a passion , or an even deeper passion for something I have already.

Expanding on the stronger why, Nietzsche’s said “He who has a why, can bear almost any how” , and even in the “Nicomachean ethics” Aristotle said something about having a resolute purpose, that you can use to embody the virtue.

“The good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.”
— Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapter 7 (1098a16–18)

The way I understand the above quote, is that the activity is good if it’s in accordance with virtue ( I’ve wrote about this before, here). I’m going to extrapolate this and say, the highest good, or the greatest activity is that which embodies all virtues, where everything has to be done right. Anyway, thats a long winded way of saying in order to be a man of highest virtue, you need to apply yourself to a gargantuan mission, and the task will demand the highest virtue. The mission turns you into the man of virtue. Tying it all up, I feel like I’m closer to realizing that “mission”.

I’m genuinely sorry for having bad writing, I just don’t have that much time to sit down and do a really good job. It’s not even that I don’t have time, its that I want to spend that time with other things. It’s kind of inversely proportional the more time I spend writing, the better I’m going to get at writing but the whole point is sharing what I’m doing, and if all I’m doing is writing better, I don’t think that’s the best thing I can be doing . I think philosophizing about life is great and great writing can inspire , but but when push comes to shove, it’s about what the person did. I’m reading “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius, and it’s really good, its not literary masterpiece like crime and punishment, but this guy was writing about his mental challenges as the emperor of Rome.

This is when I went to Kerala in 2023! അടിപൊളിയായിരുന്നു!

I’m gonna try and publish a post every Saturday at 12PM!