You, Sir, Are a Habit

By Dan Hagen

“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts,” wrote Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor turned stoic philosopher.

And Alan Watts, the English clergyman turned freelance Zen philosopher, said, “The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.”

In other words, what you routinely prefer to think about, what you routinely permit yourself to think about, is to a great extent what you actually are, what you make of yourself. Your existence precedes your essence, as the existentialists observed.

Zen Buddhism and stoicism would agree that those habitual thoughts — whether rational inquiry or meta-rational meditation — should be aimed at providing you with an untroubled spirit.

Therefore, inauthenticity comes at a higher cost than most people realize, bringing its own inner winter of discontent. As Marcus Aurelius said, “Be content to seem what you really are.”