Does it serve the greater good?

The start of each day should be marked by conscious preparation. Laying down your intentions for the day ahead, visualising yourself navigate the intended path, and imagining and preparing your spirit for the obstacles that lie ahead.

Today I revisit an old school of thought, a point of view, and outlook into the world that I gravitated towards in my younger years and believe with a decade of intentional, conscious effort plus practice that I will someday adopt it entirely into my everyday experience.

The late David Foster Wallace was an American author and unfortunately for me, his work reached me on YouTube, in a remarkable commencement speech which would in later years be coined “This is water”.

The biggest lesson from “This is water” was the importance of learning how to think, which means learning to exercise some control over how and what you think about.

Coming across this key piece of information inspired me to dig deeper, today I understand that our everyday external experience and how we form meaning from our experience is shaped fundamentally by how we see the world, which in turn is governed by how and what we think.

In life, the important freedom people often speak of involves attention, awareness, effort, and a lot of discipline plus being able to truly care about other people and sacrificing for them, over and over in myriad petty unattractive ways, every day.

It is sad but true, the most obvious, ubiquitous realities are most often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. People are struggling to come to grips with the basics, their attention span is ruined by digital social developments and their understanding of self and quality of thought is influenced by strangers from all over the world. They are connected to everything but themselves.

It’s been said countless times over the years, but I now know first-hand that the lesson is best understood from personal experience. But here goes…

Your outer world is indeed a direct reflection of your inner world. If you want to change the world you see, start working on your inner self and do not wait until it is too late to reflect and assess your virtues. The Capital T-Truth is all that matters is life before death, nothing should come as a surprise at the end.

You’ve had every second, hour, day, week, year to choose where and how your soul will rest. The only assets you have at your disposal are your time and thoughts, make careful use of these and live each day as if it is your last, every thought, every word, internal or external ask yourself if today and this moment were my last would I want to be thinking about this, does it serve the greater good?