This I was told: I had to become a new man entirely, from the ground up. I couldn’t just embark on an improvement project to sharpen up the best parts of my character.
Clean house. Or, to use the words I was told, I had to be born again. These words were used deliberately by a non-churchgoer to tell me, a man reflexively hostile to Christianity, that I should pull my head out of my ass and rebuild from nothing. All new information.
I may be a Christian, but not in ways you understand. I am certainly now open-minded and find actionable truth in the Gospels.
That’s an aside. My point here is that you can’t hold onto the old. Let it all go, or to be more precise, be willing to let it all go.
That’s the first thing that is needed. Willingness.
The second thing I needed was direction. A goal. A vision to build toward, the man I would become. This was supplied by men who had done what they asked me to do: start from absolute willingness, and rebuild according to pragmatic lessons they taught me. Accept nothing, test everything.
Later I found that these things they asked me to do had their foundations in ancient teachings. Some explicitly pointed at the Gospels. S
ome teachings came (I now know) from the Stoics, though this was never acknowledged. I think this is because the pragmatic lessons they taught me were almost entirely proven from their own experience. “Your opinion of me is your business.” This taught me to begin to care less of what others thought of me. (I’m not free of it by any means but I’m usually in pretty good shape.) That’s an example of “things outside my control” in Stoic terms.
I’m writing here to clarify what I think and build that future man that I wish to become.
Or, as another one of these men told me, to remember.