This is a wonderful and deeply philosophical meditation on what it means to live a good life.
Awais Aftab writes beautifully and evocatively about success, ambition, knowledge, self-honesty, compassion, humility, acceptance, suffering, and curiosity — all the non-negotiable elements we should keep thinking about until the very end, or until, as Goethe implored us, die into becoming.
A Meditation, Not a Manual
This isn’t a self-help essay with actionable takeaways. It’s not a productivity hack or a life optimization framework. It’s something rarer and more valuable: a genuine meditation on how to orient yourself toward a life worth living.
Aftab doesn’t prescribe. He reflects. He asks questions. He holds up ideas to the light and examines them from multiple angles, inviting you to do the same.
The Elements of Flourishing
The essay touches on themes that recur across wisdom traditions—success that isn’t merely achievement, ambition that doesn’t consume you, knowledge that transforms rather than merely accumulates, compassion that includes yourself, humility that doesn’t mean self-effacement.
What makes it powerful is the way these ideas are woven together, not as a checklist but as a tapestry. You can’t isolate one thread without losing the pattern.
On Suffering and Acceptance
One of the most moving sections deals with suffering—not as something to overcome or escape, but as something to be understood and integrated. There’s a difference between pain and suffering, between acceptance and resignation, between making peace with reality and giving up on change.
Aftab navigates these distinctions with care, resisting easy answers while still offering genuine insight.
Why I Rescued This
I won’t ruin this piece by writing a long summary or my take on it. It deserves to be read slowly, thought about deeply, and allowed to fill your mental space.
Let the quiet wisdom in it sit with you for a while.
In an internet optimized for virality and hot takes, essays like this—patient, thoughtful, genuinely wise—feel like gifts. They remind you that some questions are worth returning to again and again, not because you’ll find final answers, but because the returning itself is the practice.
As Goethe said: die into becoming.