December 15th, 2021
This is the mark of perfection of character—to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending.
No person can be perfect, and the Stoics were aware of this. The Stoics believed that although we are not capable of
reaching a state of perfection, we should not stop trying to reach perfection. After all, there is so much to gain by
trying to live a more perfect life.
The philosophy reminds me a little about a mental exercise to kill your clone. Imagine every day we spin off a clone of ourselves and within twenty-four hours, we are forced to battle to the death with our clone. In order to defeat our clone we only need to have improved ourselves a small fraction more than our clone has for the day.
The point is, each day we should focus on trying to be a better version of the person we were a day ago.
If we were to assume that today was our last day, how long could we stay true to perfection within our ethos? Could we embody this completeness for the entire day? A few hours? What if our life depended upon improving ourselves even just a small amount. We can't be perfect, but we can be better. Just trying was enough for the Stoics, and that should be well enough for us too.