Action and Meaning – ElPropósito4 min de lectura

The fuel and the compass for the journey

This week, while reading, I came across two big questions: "How should we live, and what should we do?" On how to live, the Stoics are very clear: "in accordance with nature," living a life of virtue, that is, with courage, justice, wisdom and temperance. The question of what we should do implies goals, and it also implies purpose and responsibility. How do we learn to live, and how do we know what needs doing? Neither answer can be found in other people. Both come from within, and the parallel that strikes me most is with companies. The ones that clearly define their value proposition and follow a clear vision and purpose are best placed to know what they must do to serve their customers well. The same goes for individuals. What people and organizations share is that when the answers come from within (for a company, from somewhere other than its competitors; for a person, from somewhere other than someone else’s advice or orders), they give meaning to how we act, one of the two essentials of living well.

Answering these questions ourselves, and owning our destiny, is very different from letting someone else answer them for us. When others answer, we risk depending on them for life to solve our problems, and the hardest problem of all: giving our lives meaning and significance. That instantly opens a gap in standing and authority between us and whoever we expect to "help" us. It puts us in a position of inferiority that’s hard to escape or stop depending on. Besides, having someone hand us the answers is much cheaper, since it costs no thinking, than sitting down for a while to imagine what a life guided by purpose would look like.

I cite Stoicism on how to live because, more than 2,000 years later, it still offers a practical philosophy that answers that great question thoroughly. Every reflection built on its four cardinal virtues (wisdom, courage, temperance and justice) moves us toward a life of virtue. How do we face life’s ups and downs? With courage. How do we respond to any situation? With wisdom and temperance. How do we act when facing a dilemma? With justice. Living those virtues, though, takes the discipline to practice them day after day, in every activity, situation and moment life brings. Easy? Hardly. The reward? A life of virtue.

The perfect complement, when it comes to knowing what we should do, is being clear on our life purpose. My starting principle is that a life guided by purpose unlocks the full potential of a person, a team or an organization. We may be clear on our vision, that "where we see ourselves in a given time." Yet if we can’t answer "why do we want to be there?", the table we’re playing on is missing a leg. We can probably start defining what we must do to get there, but we’ll keep hitting gaps that knock the pieces over again and again. Articulating a purpose is the key to moving forward with a clear sense of how to live and the certainty that everything we set out to do has meaning.

On the journey toward how to live and what to do, I hope we can build strong relationships with others and take actions that give meaning to our lives and to how we act.

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

• P.S. This week’s VELA:
• What I was watching: Jordan Peterson Teaches Joe Rogan about the Cross. A great explanation of the meaning of the cross from a psychiatric point of view, and of the value we can draw from it
  – What I was listening to: Parental Trauma in a World of Gender Insanity. Also from Jordan Peterson’s podcast, an episode that left me deeply reflective and worried
  – What I was reading: La Batalla Cultural (The Cultural Battle). This is where I found the two questions behind this post. I wish I could get through it faster, but it’s so rich that I’m savoring it page by page. Thank you for the autograph, Agustín
  – What I was learning: 7 practices for the perfect Stoic day. From Pepe García’s podcast, El Estoico

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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