Alas, today’s blog post entry will not feature the “Duel of the Fates” as shown above. Although it really could, because both lightsaber duels and music by John Williams have contributed significantly to my happiness.
What I want to talk about today is the difference between strategy and tactics in respect to happiness, aka living the good life. And then I wanna tell you what I want to do with that in respect to this blog.
Strategy is the overall long term planning and decision making that goes into making a goal happen. Tactics are the short-term, in-the-moment decisions/adaptations you enact in response to what’s changing around you. For instance, I might know that in order to support my health and well-being, I need to work out at the gym at my work at least three times a week. My strategy might be to keep a gym bag in my car at all times so I can be prepared to go to the gym. However, I take my car to the shop one day and forget my gym bag inside (with my only good shoes). A smart tactical decision to cope with that error might be to take a series of shorter walks throughout the day so I can meet part of my goal, even though I’m not prepped to do my usual routine.
My philosophy degree in college was mostly ethics and moral psychology. That basically means that I studied a lot of strategy about happiness: big picture thinking and arguments about human nature, God, and the best way to live a good life. What’s virtuous, what’s commendable, and how is it that humans perceive the good at all. All good stuff, and I highly recommend doing your conceptual homework (I’ll post some of that thinking here eventually). Getting the foundation, or the strategy straight (more or less) before moving on to tactics can be valuable, particularly if you’re skeptical like me, and you really need to hash out the big picture thinking before moving forward. However, what I didn’t understand until more recently was how important the little day-to-day details–the tactical execution of self-love–was in the grand scheme of living the good life. I knew the day-to-day was important in the school of virtue (good habits), but what I learned was mostly about love of God and love of neighbor…not so much the appropriate love of self.
You can’t live the good life if you are constantly running out of gas. That’s much of my story: being relatively oblivious that we have a tank o’energy o’good things in life and if you aren’t minding the store and refilling the tank, you will in fact run out of gas. The gas tank will not refill itself on its own, especially if you like speeding through life driving uphill like I do. (Challenges, yay!)
There are a number of reasons why that concept was novel to me, that I will share in subsequent episodes. Sufficient for now is the fact that in these “episodes” I would like to share what I’ve learned about the tactics side of happiness recently, in hopes of offering a candle to a fellow journeyer. I hope you will find some encouragement in finding your own way to the happiness that I believe God desires for all of us to dwell in.
My goal is to post an episode a day for the next month in the effort of recording and sharing some thinking about (primarily) the daily practice of seeking to live a good life.
Further Reading/Listening:
For tactics: Try Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier. Or Untangle by Mediation Studio.
For strategy: Try Aristotle’s 2000 year old book, The Nicomachean Ethics. I’m serious, try it. If you’ve never done this kind of reading before, and you figure out what he means in the first two paragraphs…it will probably change your life. I know it changed mine. Take a month to do it. Some things are meant to be savored, and this little thought-gem is delectable.
For something a little more modern, consider After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre.
For something super modern, try The Good Place on Netflix. Kudos to Michael Schur and NBC for doing an amazing job bringing philosophy to life on TV.
Disclosure: By training, I’m a virtue ethicist and a Christian, but I don’t think you have to be either to give any of those resources a few moments of your time.