A Little More On Character

It's day 246 of documenting 2025.

Another late night post...
Here we are 😏
What happened?
An intended 30-minute nap turned to 2 hours and 35 minutes of sleep. I had no idea my body would betray me like that!
It's all good tho...
The streak is still alive 🔥

So, I guess I'll just jump into the highlights for today....as my day wasn't particularly eventful.
Just the usual, the mundane, the normal.
It was good 😌

365 Days With Self-discipline
📌 On Learning the Big Ideas

"You have to learn all the big ideas in the key disciplines in a way that they’re in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life.

If you do that, I solemnly promise you that one day you’ll be walking down the street and you’ll look to your right and left and you’ll think “my heavenly days, I’m now one of the few competent people in my whole age cohort.”

If you don’t do it, many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows."
Quote by Charlie Munger

All human knowledge is interconnected on some level. The big ideas can often be applied to general life.

For this reason, it pays to develop at least a basic understanding of the key concepts of some of the most important disciplines,
such as mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, engineering, history, etc.

Let’s take compound interest, one of the most important big ideas in investing. When the interest you earn each year is added to your principal, your returns each year grow at an ever increasing rate.

It might sound boring on paper, but in the real world it’s what has made many investors millionaires or billionaires.

This big idea can be applied to personal growth, too. You never want to grow at a fixed rate; if you constantly build on top of your new experiences (interest), you’ll grow at an ever-increasing rate.

Your personal growth might be
relatively slow the first year, but each succeeding year, you’ll get better and better results more quickly.

Strive to educate yourself in a broad variety of fields and focus primarily on the fundamentals.
Try to find a real-world application of those principles in your own life.
Even if you don’t always find it, self-education alone will be a valuable exercise in self-discipline.

I hope this is understandable.
Seems pretty clear to me.
In one sentence, I would summarize it as this:
"Educate yourself and understand the fundamentals. Then keep building on that".
C'est fini 🙂

Moving on, let's remind ourselves of the lessons from writings of a Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
(Are we still on this? Yep!)

Meditations
📌 Book 5

30. The world’s intelligence is not selfish.
It created lower things for the sake of higher ones, and attuned the higher ones to one another.

Look how it subordinates, how it connects, how it assigns each thing what each deserves, and brings the better things into
alignment.

31. How have you behaved to the gods, to your parents, to your siblings, to your wife, to your children, to your teachers, to your nurses, to your friends, to your relatives, to your slaves?

Have they all had from you nothing “wrong and unworthy, either word or deed”?
Consider all that you’ve gone through, all that you’ve survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete.

How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?

32. Why do other souls—unskilled, untrained—disturb the soul with skill and understanding?
—And which is that?

The one that knows the beginning and the end, and knows the logos that runs through all things and that assigns to all a place, each in its allotted span, throughout the whole of time.

33. Soon you’ll be ashes, or bones. A mere name, at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo.
The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial.

Dogs snarling at each other. Quarreling children—laughing and then bursting into tears a moment later.
Trust, shame, justice, truth—“gone from the earth and only found in heaven.”

Why are you still here? Sensory objects are shifting and unstable; our senses dim and easily deceived; the soul itself a decoction of the blood; fame in a world like this is worthless.

—And so?
Wait for it patiently—annihilation or metamorphosis.
—And until that time comes—what?
Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.
Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control.

Wow 😳
Marcus was pretty direct in his writings, something I've noticed.
But this frankness is probably what is lacking in most of the content on the Internet these days.
Most of what people consider "entertainment" is sugarcoated with what they want to see and hear.

It took some time for me to realize this...and when I did, I changed my content base.
Anything that teaches a principle I can apply or a lesson I can learn in a true way, I read, listen or watch.
Anything else...no thank you 🙃

That being said, let's look at the interpretation of these excerpts, so we can understand what Marcus Aurelius was trying to say...

30. "The world’s intelligence is not selfish..."

Marcus is reflecting on the structure and harmony of the universe; how it’s ordered for balance and growth.

Higher things serve deeper purposes, and everything has its place. The universe isn’t random or self-centered; it’s intelligently interconnected.

Lesson: Trust in a purposeful design. You are part of something greater, even if you don’t fully understand how it works.

31. "How have you behaved to the gods..."

A personal audit. Marcus urges self-reflection: Have you acted with integrity and kindness in your relationships; with family, friends, teachers, even servants?
Have you stayed true through trials and been noble in the face of both pain and praise?

Lesson: Reflect on your life not in terms of what you achieved, but how you lived and loved. Character is your legacy.

32. "Why do other souls...disturb the soul with skill..."
 
He’s puzzled why people who don’t understand the deeper order of life can still shake those who do.
The “soul with understanding” is the one aligned with the logos; the divine reason guiding all.

Lesson: Don’t be rattled by ignorance. If your soul knows the deeper order, stay rooted in that clarity.

33. "Soon you’ll be ashes or bones..."

A sobering reminder of mortality. The things we chase; fame, possessions, validation...are fleeting and often meaningless.
Life is chaotic, people are fickle, and nothing material lasts.
So what should we do?

Lesson: Be patient with life and death. In the meantime, live with reverence, love, humility, and discipline.
Only your character truly belongs to you.

The key theme here is Character.
How you live your life and portray yourself in the world. That's what is truly yours 😌

I'll end today's post on this note.
Thanks for reading 🎀
I hope you never forget to live by the principles in God's Word...and acknowledge Him in all your ways.
Because that, my friend....is how to make your life work.

See you in the next post 💜
PS. Get more content like this on my Selar store.