Strong, good, & free
Taking a principled approach to life leads to a more satisfying and fulfilling existence.
But there are an infinite amount of reasonable-sounding principles. The purpose of having strong principles is in large part to reduce cognitive load when it comes to making decisions in life. Therefore, there's merit in defining just three - the most foundational and generally applicable. This makes them easier to remember and live by.
After some thought, I believe the following are those three. They cover the most ground and feel the most right to me.
Note: If I were to re-write this today, it would be "Strong, loving, & free." They manifest similarly, but I think love is upstream of being 'good.'
To be strong
Across all of its forms. Physical, emotional, spiritual.
Strength is defined by resistance. It's your ability to overcome and persist in the presence of discomfort.
- Strive to become physically strong.
- Strive to become emotionally strong; embrace adversity, turmoil, emotional discomfort. Reframe bad things as opportunities to grow stronger.
- Strive to become spiritually strong; develop not only a broader sense of what you intend to do and pursue in your life, but aim to develop clarity on why you intend to do and pursue those things. Aim to see the world, and the way in which you intend to exist in it, clearly.
Strength can only form where there is resistance, and discomfort is the most universal indicator of resistance.
Therefore, the most universal way to develop strength is to invite and embrace discomfort in your life.
The correlation is almost perfect. The more discomfort you experience, the more strength you will develop.
Pain is a more severe version of discomfort. I think the same applies. Temporary pain is generally productive in becoming stronger relative to the level of pain you experience.
There is such a thing as too much pain. However, humans as a species are a lot less fragile than we're wired to believe. Extreme, disabling pain is too much. But the wide gradient between that and moderate discomfort is almost always productive toward developing strength.
To be good
You must be strong to be good.
Strength comes first
Goodness can only exist in the presence of strength; it is a direct dependency.
Goodness is not niceness
Goodness may manifest as niceness, but niceness is not a direct result of goodness. (And often quite the opposite.)
Niceness is merely a way of engaging with other humans. There are endless reasons for why you may choose to behave nicely. Often it is used as a strategy, whether conciously or unconsciously, to achieve some end.
You may do it because it is culturally expected. You may do it out of habit. You may do it out of weakness—fear of the interpersonal repercussions of not being nice. You may do it out of selfishness, for personal gain, to gain the approval of others, to gain influence, to be awarded some promotion, to fit in, etc.
Being nice is different from being good.
Goodness only exists in the presence of resistance.
Doing good means taking intentional, decisive action. It requires deploying strength to overcome resistance for the sake of doing good. It costs something.
This often means sacrificing one's own needs/wants in service of a greater good, often the needs/wants of others.
To be free
Freedom to:
- Spend your time as you wish
- With the people you choose
- In a place that you love
- Doing things you deem worthy
The key to attaining freedom is in carefully defining what you want.
Most 'wants' are universally shared among most people.
Time, money, and all of the infinite manifestations of each are universally valued resources, and are therefore difficult to acquire.
They exist in marketplaces, with bidders and sellers, where you must outbid the competition to obtain the desired resource. In other words, you must overpay relative to what everyone else is in the market is willing to pay.
Overpaying requires strength
Once again, strength is a direct dependency. If you'd like to obtain freedom, you must overpay relative to the competition.
Overpaying is painful. It may look like:
- Working long, tiring hours
- Spending less time with the people you love, doing the things you love
- Taking risk & accepting the emotional discomfort of uncertainty - will your efforts ever pay off?
- Accepting the possibility of failure and all of it's social, emotional, and material repercussions
If you want to atain freedom, you need strength.
Goodness is essential
The pursuit of freedom can be selfish and zero-sum.
If your definition of freedom requires overcoming the constraints imposed by universally-valued resources like time and money, you will be met with plenty of opportunities to take shortcuts and hurt others along the way.
In game theory, there are effective strategies which involve exploiting your counterparts for gain (stepping on others to inch closer to attaining your desires at the cost of theirs).
Therefore I believe internalizing the value of goodness is a requisite before you embark on your pursuit of freedom. It's a spiritual constraint.
It's the decision that nothing is more valuable than upholding goodness.
It means that how you get to where you want to go matters more than whether or not you ever get there.
Strong, good, and free
These aren't absolute adjectives. Each is a personal journey. You can always be stronger, more good, and more free than you are today.
The point is not perfection, but direction.
To be human is to be imperfect—and imperfection is what gives life purpose. It gives you a path forward; the opportunity to strive to improve each day.