Thursday
What do you stand for? What is your purpose? Who do you aspire to become? These are questions that ancient Stoics pondered upon, and their answer was virtue, our topic for today. However, during some point in everyone’s life, we ask ourselves these questions too, because in reality, no one knows what they are doing, or more specifically, why they are doing what they’re doing. We all waddle along every morning, struggling with our day to day lives, never thinking for a second about the bigger scheme of things. Having a purpose can drive us to get out of bed every morning, and feel a sense of accomplishment every day. However, knowing or having a purpose to life is completely unnecessary for ‘success’ or ‘happiness’. But it is crucial if you want to live ‘the good life’. To Stoics, this purpose is virtue, because they believe that the ultimate goal that one can have is to grow into a good person. Virtues are commonly broken down into courage, moderation, wisdom and justice. I find it incredibly interesting that they prioritise this over anything else – virtue is more important than family, safety, love, happiness, etc., things that we would usually consider on the top of the list of things that we need the most. Having these virtues should, ideally, if put into practice, change you into a more complete individual who understands how to take care of the other aspects in their life.
For the whole of today, I was on environmental (garbage) duty. I spent my time cleaning up the school, organising and rearranging things, emptying out bins and delivering items. On top of this, we had to help the canteen in preparation, serving and cleanup for both recess and lunch. Everyone at some point in their lives at our school will have to do this, and not by choice, but because we have to. Despite all of this however, it gave a sense of pleasure and fulfilment. All the work and labour we put into the job gave us nothing that we could use practically, and left us with dirty clothes and smelly hands. Yet there is more to the job that the work involved. We were helping the school become a more liveable place, while also improving the lives of others through performing simple tasks for them. Even with nothing in return, we felt satisfied by the end of the day because we knew that we had done good, even if not voluntary. This is what I think the Stoics are getting at; they understand that it may be more useful to dedicate your life to good health, wealth or fame. However, in the end, life is about developing yourself as a human being, and becoming the social and rational beings that we were meant to be.
