The Choice
This morning I stood at the same crossroads Hercules once faced. Vice stood before me, soft-voiced and tempting: “Rest a little longer. Eat whatever you want. Nobody will know if you break your word.”
And then came Virtue — quiet, steady, unshaken: “Wake up. Show up. Suffer now. Build a life of meaning, not comfort.”
I chose Virtue. I chose the hard path — again. Not because it feels good, but because I refuse to die soft. I will suffer with purpose now so I can rise with pride later. Every sacrifice, every rep, every fasted hour — this is the life I’m building. A life I can respect. A life I can pass on.
Because the world doesn’t reward the comfortable. It crowns the disciplined.
“A limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do not use for clearing away the clouds from your mind, it will go, and you will go — and it will never return.” (Book 2, Section 4)- Marcus Aurelius