The Wisest Possible Mind & Setting Priorities
The wisest mind looks into the most distant future for the most valued reward,
which can only be purchased with the currency of the present.
When you and I look around, we get caught up in comparing ourselves to others. Looking back to my giving and pursuits before 2017 with new eyes, I realized I pursued superiority by comparison. Weak men like me always live by comparison:
More money than him.
More knowledgeable than her.
Everlasting fame.
More likes.
But that is not wisdom. Nor a good life. You and I must look further. But how far?
I believe the wisest mind looks into the most distant future for the most valued reward, which can only be purchased with the currency of the present.
"The wisest mind looks into the most distant future for the most valued reward, which can only be purchased with the currency of the present. "
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If you read my forthcoming book, 9 Steps to Build a Life of Meaning, you’ll hear a little of my story. In that story, those death threats, my national embarrassment (on NBC News), and the desire to escape created a change in me. I had been thinking too low — in terms of years and decades. Periods too short for quality decisions.
I decided to think longer. Tweets last minutes, podcasts last days, and blogs last weeks. But ideas and books can outlast nations. And perhaps I would one day share a worthy idea—or story—that may endure forever. So, I wrote a book about what that story may look like. Just to take a stab at it.
Imagine that version of your future self that the person who most rightly loves you would want for you, and ask that version of yourself:
- “Am I thinking too short?
- What will be the pursuit I will least likely regret on my deathbed?
- Will meaning be best found in my desire for personal comfort?
- What’s the fastest way to orient myself towards the unregrettable?
- What would my enemy wish for me to do, that I know is actually the opposite of what I most need to do?
- Are my priorities set on heaven or hell?
- Do I have a worthy enemy to attack?
- Is the way I’ve used the past 30 days the same way a wise man would use his time?
- Why does how I spend my money forecast how I will spend my eternity?”
Let’s get our priorities back in alignment.
So identify that wisest strategy by writing down the following three elements in that formula:
- The most distant future
- The most valuable reward (the priority)
- The currency of the present
The Most Distant Future (Destination)
Allow me to take a shortcut here and state some intellectual conclusions. At a minimum, Reality (God) exists in both the most distant past and the final future. We are human beings, a sub-species of Being. He, in the ultimate investigation, is Being itself. Reality, Being, and God would, after a long philosophical discovery, turn out to be the same thing. Therefore, the origin of creation and its destiny (because of God’s power and wisdom in his unthwartable planning in establishing Reality and all Being) would converge and uncover the uncomfortable truth that Being is Himself immutable (unchangeable). And because He is immutable, we human beings are the sub-beings responsible for changing because we are not aligned with ultimate Reality.
The Most Valuable Reward (Goal)
And in finding this immutable-ness, we slowly realize, if we were that wisest of men, that Being Himself, would offer a reward. And that reward, above all others is the highest possible reward attainable. And therefore, giving our effort for anything other than that reward offered by He-who-is-both-Reality’s-Origin-and-Destiny, would also be the most valuable because it is offered on the most real of all the basis: indestructability. At its very essence, the Divine offer is the most valuable reward. Not the offer you’d wish it to be.
The Currency of The Present (Work)
And finally, there must be a cost. Men rarely value what they never work for. (Or the desperately needed gift of something they could never earn.) And so, we see here that our attention, not the attention of minutes and fleeting promises, but the attention of our life, is that currency which forms value. Attention is the only fungibility we can offer the Divine. For by our attention, we are remade into the wisest possible of men and women. Our attention to training and mastery. Our concentration in silence, hoping to hear beauty speak. Our intellectual focus hoping our false desires will be destroyed by the true majesty of God’s beauty.
There, with our desire aligned with our attention, both pointing toward Forever, we can set our course. We can make some assumptions. We can, God-forbid, leap into the unvoiding nothingness of difficult tasks with unknown conclusions to grow not up, but to grow toward. For as you grow toward Being, in a certain sense, you earn your maturity as a human (being). And the more setbacks and heartaches you experience and ignore to keep moving, the more that knowledge evolves into wisdom. For wisdom is not in the facts of crude knowledge, but in the assumptions of properly aligned attention. The assumption that the movement toward is what manifests the wisdom as true. And not just true. But truer than true.
Here, we come full circle: weak men live by comparison. Strong men thrive in proximity.
And there, pointed higher and further out, our lives become the wager. Our meaningless lives, which are wasting away each moment, are but noticed to be the all-in bet of an infinite upside. Yes, your life’s attention, which you are most certain to lose, becomes the only currency to winning.
"Your life, which you are most certain to lose, becomes the only currency to winning."
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This gives you the confidence not just to read and pray, but to kill and move. To launch out into the darkness of the cold world of starting a charity, asking a girl to Sonic, or even taking on a bit of courage to start that business full-out instead of as a side hustle. Because what you actually do in the world matters. You cannot sit and theorize. You must move. You must kill or be killed. You must give it your all because you have already secured more than everything.
So, this is a call from the digital world for you to focus on the Most Real World, with an action in the physical world.
So, here is the formula for setting your priorities each morning and every year: The wisest mind looks into the most distant future for the most valued reward, which can only be purchased with the currency of the present.
And go all-in. Because you already are.
Rick
