Principle:
A most important idea in your life.
Principle derives from principia in Latin, which means first, foremost, leading, chief, or most necessary.
We asked people what the most important thing was to them. Very few responded with principles. Most people responded with “people” or “the family” as their number one. The familial connection was more important to them than principles. Now when people hear me say that’s backwards, they’ll say, “how cold are you? That’s so cold.” I’m not telling you that they don’t matter at all.
…..
What I’m telling you is that the familial connection, no matter what it is: between a mother and a son, mother and a daughter, father and a son, father and a daughter, husband and wife, it doesn’t matter, as much as principles. I’m telling you, you have to put principles first, otherwise those relationships are just meaningless. They don’t have any real value unless they’re based upon principle, which is why so many relationships are dysfunctional. Principles have to come first before you can even build a solid relationship with another human being.
Your principles are everything. Without them there is no narrative to your existence. It is the zero-point from which everything else aligns. People come and go, you are until death. With principles, you begin to make sense, because your actions have a rigid truth (your vision). Your actions make sense, because they build ontop of each other from that source of truth (what you want to bring in the world). And your relationships make sense, because they’re on the stable ground of an ideal (mutual self-interest), not just happenstance of hedgehogs. And your energy comes back, because principles are the things that you care about the most, that you can’t live without (isn’t a world with a flourished principle of yours divine, exciting, life-affirming?).
Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things; first, an ideal, which takes the imagination by the storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.