These are 4 major lessons I learned in 2024, the goal is to come back at the end of 2025 and be cringed by all these.

It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war

This one was a conversation I heard a few years back between Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. Where the former gonna appear more than one time in this article. It is the idea of becoming competent, dangerous and competitive and then learning how to control it. In Jordan Peterson’s exact words, “You Should be a monster. An absolute monster and then you should learn how to control it.”

It got me thinking a lot this year. How can you say you are good if you don’t have the capacity to be bad? or how can you say you are innocent if you are incapable of harm? You say you don’t want to start a conflict, but is it because you choose peace, or because you lack the strength to face it? Is this another facade to mask the weakness?

I learnt that We must be the most competent person we can be. When push comes to shove we should be capable of it. Only by becoming genuinely capable of danger, we learn to control it. And that control is what makes us virtuous, not the other way around.

The original quote “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” is by Miyamoto Musashi in The Book of Five Rings published in 1645

You can’t wait for everything to be ok to live your life

It’s been a hard year. A one that tolls you hard and drags you to the hell. And if you’ve been through tough times as we all inevitably do, you’ll recognize the chain reaction that often follows. One big setback can spiral into another, and another, until, before you even realize it, you’re buried under a pile of bad habits that have nothing to do with the original struggle.

I was there and realized and trying to get over it I found this reel from Instagram which was a message sent by a UFC wrestler Dustin Poirier to his comedian friend Theo Von that says “You can’t wait for everything to be ok to live your life”. I was like, this is exactly what I wanted to hear, I should print this and hang it on my wall.

Yes, I have setbacks, tough times, and difficult years but it’s life, there is no ideal time, no perfect flow and there isn’t a single time that everything is in order. It’s always gonna be ups and downs. Always gonna be some kind of worry in at least one part of your life. Dare I say, if you don’t have anything to worry about at least one aspect of your life, you are not striving enough. So I better live my life without expecting everything to be ok, otherwise, I’ll never live.

You always own the option of having no opinion

We are in a world where everything is connected, and everything is shared, commented on, and reacted to. Yet here I am, someone with a website dedicated to sharing opinions, finding the wisdom of having no opinion profoundly liberating.

Marcus Aurelius who was one of Rome’s greatest emperors was capable of refraining from having opinions about everything while successfully holding the empire through decades of stability and prosperity, I think we have the option too to not have opinions about everything we see on the internet.

You are not obligated to weigh in on everything, especially when it doesn’t concern you or you lack sufficient understanding. I don’t need to wrestle my mind over everything I see on social media. And it doesn’t mean having no opinions, it’s the option of reserving them for matters that truly matter. Maybe this is a version of “I don’t give a fuck about that” in a more sophisticated Roman way.

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.” by Marcus Aurelius in the book Meditations written 167 A.C.E

Your life is not margaritas on a beach

As I told you in the beginning Dr. Peterson is going to appear more than once in this article. This is something I believe is one of the most profound pieces of advice Peterson gave. It’s about fixing the mundane things in our lives and realizing that those mundane things are our life every day, not the vacation we take twice a year. Here is a transcript of the last passage and the 8-minute video of that cause I think it’s more relatable, powerful and articulate than anything I would write.

“Your life isn’t margaritas on a beach in Jamaica. That happens now and then. Those are exceptions. Your life is how your wife greets you at the door when you come home every day because that’s like 10 minutes a day, your life is how you treat each other over the breakfast table because that’s an hour and a half an hour every single day. You get those mundane things right, those things you do every day, you’ve concentrated on them and you make them pristine, it’s like you’ve got 80% of your life put together. These little things that are right in front of us. They’re not little. That’s the first thing, they are not little and they’re hard to set right, and if you set them right it has a rippling effect and fast too, way faster than people think.”