He could have waited. He could have gotten the land cleared. He could have waited until he was on firmer financial footing. He could have waited until his children were older.
There were a million reasons that Ulysses S. Grant could have rationalized holding onto the slave that his father-in-law had given them. His family was in desperate straits. And slavery was the law of the land and had been for thousands of years. He could have worked out a deal with William Jones, the slave, to earn his freedom. He could have told himself he was one of the kinder owners and that the problem with slavery wasn't people like him, but monsters further South. He could have ruminated on the dilemma for months—turning it over a thousand times in his mind—all the while benefiting from the labor they needed for the farm.
But as we tell the story in Right Thing, Right Now (grab signed copies here!), Ulysses S. Grant made the expensive decision to do the right thing. He granted them their freedom on March 29, 1859. He was opposed to slavery. He didn't want to be a part of it. So he decided not to be.
Look, there is always going to be a way for us to delay doing what needs to be done. There is always an excuse, a rationalization, a reason. We tell ourselves it's not that bad. We tell ourselves we need to wait until we're more secure. We distract ourselves with busyness, with edge-cases, with debate. We need better circumstances, we tell ourselves, more ideal conditions.
"You could be good today," Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations (who it's worth noting did not free his slaves). "Instead, you choose tomorrow." The right time to do the hard thing, the courageous thing, the right thing? It's right now. Not later. Not tomorrow. Now.
In pursuing excellence, we often get distracted by external metrics. Yet, the most meaningful competition is against ourselves—challenging our limitations and finding satisfaction in personal growth. True victory comes from being better than yesterday, through dedication to the process, not by fixating on outpacing others or reaching arbitrary benchmarks.
This Stoic principle was vividly on display during Ryan's recent journey running the Original Marathon route in Greece. Throughout the grueling 26.2-mile path from Marathon to Athens, Ryan wasn't competing against other runners—he was challenging his own physical and mental limits with each step.
Premiering TODAY, head to dailystoic.com/marathon to watch our Marathon documentary sponsored by HOKA—and see what it truly means to put philosophy into practice.
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