The Decision That Changed Everything

I looked in the mirror and found myself wearing a ratty tank top, shorts, flip-flops, and a beard worthy of any beard-lover’s respect.

“How did I get here?”

Pretty simply – road tripping, reading philosophy, writing poetry. These things do not make for a clean-looking boy.

But why? Before that I was on the ultimate money-path. I was running a small hedge fund and working with a kickass startup.

It didn’t make any sense. I went about my life, shaved my beard, and started going to the gym again. (i.e. I was reintroducing dullness into my exterior world.)

Then randomly I was reminded of the quote that changed my life. It was Seneca again:

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?”

I read that in front of a lake in Maine and it inspired me to change everything.

It was one of those instants that affect a huge portion of life.

Remembering that one decision changed everything again.

I reached this place, at least in part, on purpose.

What other decisions are hidden from me that I’ve made?

There’s no way to know.

The only thing we get to do is make decisions about now.

Maybe they won’t matter tomorrow.

But they probably will.