A submission about a simple life should be simple, here are a series of quotes from Seneca, who will illustrate the point for us: “A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his social position, which is only something we wear like clothes”- Seneca (Letter XLVII) “It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it were silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it were earthenware is no less great” - seneca (Letter V) “Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one” - Seneca (Letter V) In my opinion, living a simple life is the easiest way to achieve happiness. Presence and gratitude are key pillars to live this way. Part of living a simple life is to take care of what is truly yours: Your mind, and your body. Living simply does not mean to vegetate, to be unkempt, to devoid yourself of responsibility. Your responsibilities are what make your simple life meaningful. Every step you take should be fulfilling a responsibility, and thus, every step is responsible for your simple life. Every step is responsible for your meaning because every step is essential and therefore meaningful. Take pride in your mental health, your physical health, your hygiene, your cleanliness, your appearance, your home. “Anyone entering our homes should admire us, and not our furnishings” (Seneca - Letter V). “Praise in him what can neither be given nor snatched away, what is peculiarly a man’s (…). It is his Spirit. Man’s ideal state is realised when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born. And what is that reason that demands of him? Something very easy - That he live in accordance with his own nature.”- Seneca (Letter XLI) “For those who follow nature, everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just rowing against the stream.” - Seneca (Letter CXXII)

As the year draws to a close, I’m hearing more and more goal setting and discussion of objectives to hit for the end of next year. As I reflect on my own year, I can’t even remember where I put the piece of paper I wrote my goals down on is, let alone remember the goals I had arbitrarily set myself at the start of the year. As a brief detour: I think the way you live your life day in, day out, the choices you make, and the things you accept or reject show what your goals really are. Yes, a younger me would say he wants a six-pack for summer every January, but his actions didn’t evidence that this was a goal. An outsider couldn’t have guessed a six-pack was on the agenda as I dug into my second cookie dough Ben and Jerry’s of the day. If you are going to set goals, I think an important frame to hold in your mind is that of “life is inputs and outputs.” It’s very easy to state the output that we desire, but rarely do we think about the tangible inputs that will ultimately achieve it. A goal is just an output. So what inputs need to go in to achieve it? Each hour of your day, you are inputting into something. For many of us its hours put into school or work, but what’s our desired output here? Even worse, we sink time into scrolling on reels and consuming content, these are all inputs but to what end? Perhaps you’re at peace with the time you sink into content consumption and you see it as some productive use of time to some worthwhile end, then again, probably not. Thinking ahead to what we want to achieve in the next year is perhaps a valuable endeavour. However, seeing the finish line is one thing, knowing what to train to reach it is another, and actually doing the work is the most important step of all. Most of us reverse engineer the input-output equation: We see some great goal at the end. However, I think if we adopt an input-oriented approach: What am I doing day in day out? Where does this ultimately lead me? Do I want the outcome I am presently working towards? How can I alter my day to day actions to achieve what I supposedly want?

It’s currently 22:22, I haven’t posted the 2nd blog this week. It hasn’t even been written. As I’ve finished the day it’s all too easy to let today slip, it’s only one day after all. I’ve been consistent since July, it’s now the end of October. Surely I can miss a day? Nobody actually reads them, nobody will actually notice. Even the people who may notice, they won’t really care if I miss today. So why not just let it go? Yes nobody is tuning in for these blogs, yes nobody will notice, yes nobody will actually care. Except me. I said from day 1 I’m not missing a day. This is the easiest part of The Library, just writing something twice a week, if I can’t do it now, when the stakes are low, when there is no pressure, when there are no other plates to juggle in The Library. How will I cope when this (hopefully) grows in importance, size and responsibility? It’s 22:26. There’s no referencing to philosophers or authors in this post. This is purely to tick the box. We don’t miss a day. I don’t miss a day. This is a small win, because it shows intent. It’s 22:28 on a Friday night, my post gym meal is cooking, I’d really prefer to relax, to zone out, but no. This HAS to be done. There’s no excuse for not getting a post out. There’s two reasons I’m getting this post out. 1) Because I said I would. The commitment it this: 2 blog posts every week Tuesday and Friday, and I will honour it. 2) Because every success in my life stems from small wins. From an hour of revision here and there, from just pushing that extra rep to reach failure. It’s the small things. It’s 22:33. It took 11 minutes to vent my thoughts. 11 minutes I could’ve spent on reels or shorts whilst my steaks cooked. But choosing to write this meant I can continue to say I’ve not missed a day, I’ve kept my word, I’ve done the work when I didn’t feel like it. I should have prepared more. However, it’s my belief that these small pushes will compound each and every time. If I let it slip this once, I let it slip again, and it’s just not something I’m willing to negotiate.

When I was 20 years old, I quit my placement year to pursue this venture. One morning in May 2023 I recorded my first video about “What is Happiness?” I’ve never really aimed to be happy, but someone close to me at the time was making happiness their only goal. They focused solely on how they felt, and in doing so, this seemed to make them even sadder, and the depth of their despair even deeper. I wanted to learn about happiness so I could help them, so I researched it. I found that in researching, and in trying to help, I was achieving a sense of happiness. It was a meaningful pursuit. Firstly, I think happiness is the wrong goal. If you aim for happiness, you’re immediately focusing on the gap between your current mood and ‘happiness’. In other words, you focus on a deficiency. The same way, if you focus on attractiveness, you focus on your defects and feel ugly. If you focus on intelligence you always feel stupid. Us humans seem to have a cruel way of instilling our own insufficiencies through focusing on some arbitrary aim. To echo a phrase I shared in that first video: "There are times in your life when you’re not going to be happy, then what are you going to do?" I’ve been lucky in that happiness has never really been my goal, I’ve always been taught to work towards something. Naturally, I aim to make my friends happy. I aim to make my family happy. Despite not being in a relationship, I even aim to make the future Mrs King happy. In serving these people who matter to me, I seem to find happiness. My first video was inspired by Emily Esfahani Smith’s Ted Talk, who named belonging, purpose, transcendence and story telling as the 4 pillars of meaning. However, belonging is the topic of choice today. The person close to me at the time didn’t have a sense of belonging, the only belonging either of us had seemed to be the relationship we shared. As such, I drifted from good friends, even loosing some. My sense of belonging diminished, and only when said person left my life did I start to rekindle ties with friends and family, even forming belonging in new places like the gym. I was once again able to connect with and feel accepted by those important people around me.

A really cool concept I came across is the idea that you want your average Tuesday to look the way most of your life does. For a large part of my adult life I had been living for the next weekend, or gearing towards the next holiday or break from my life. A chance to get away and escape. I read Seneca’s Moral Letters when I was 20 years old, it was off the back of a rough year. I wasn’t happy with my job, I had a turbulent relationship and I was looking for a break from my life. I mean this in the literal sense, I wanted respite from the very existence I had constructed for myself. Seneca’s quote goes like this: “All this hurrying from place to place won't bring you any relief, for you're bringing with you your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.” (Letter CIV) This thought echoes one of the best ideas I’ve heard in the last few years “your life is not margaritas on a beach, that happens now and then, those are exceptions (Peterson, 2017).” Your life is the breakfast, lunch and dinner you have with your parents, or friends, or girlfriend. Your life is the conversations you have, the ideas you share, the love you give. Your life is how your boss and your colleagues treat you each and everyday. It’s the work you complete and the goals you work towards. Your life is the gym you go to, it’s the journey you take each and every morning and each and every night. It’s the walk, or the drive, or the bus, tram or train. The mundane tasks which you complete, the cooking, the getting dressed, the cleaning and tidying, the laborious shop. It’s the average Tuesday. That’s your life. There’s two ideas I’ve found useful. 1. From Foster Wallace: You get to choose how you view the mundanity of life, if you see daily tasks as chores, you’ll find that you see the majority of your existence is a duty and not a life lived. 2. You get to make those mundane, everyday chores into something more. If you iron out the people you associate with, the words you speak and the goals you orient towards then you’ll find your average Tuesday is something worth waking up for.