Look For Teachable Moments
On the eve of the 2008 election, the journalist Joe Klein asked Barack Obama how he’d made his decision to respond to the brewing scandal about Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, having made controversi...
13 Touko 20193min
If It’s Right, It’s Right For You
Sometimes we get asked or tasked with doing stuff in life we’d rather not have to do. Maybe that’s working a less than glamorous job when we’re young. Maybe that’s filling a role in your family that d...
10 Touko 20192min
You Decide The End of The Story
When James Stockdale was shot down in Vietnam, he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. He spent seven years being tortured and subjected to unimaginable loneliness and terror. He had little cho...
9 Touko 20192min
The First and Most Important Victory
It’s easy to look at people who are calm and self-disciplined and assume that their disposition comes naturally to them, or that it is somehow divinely inspired. These people, they simply don’t have t...
8 Touko 20193min
Who To Be Friends With?
Of the Stoics, Seneca seems like the one who had the most fun. He’s the one who it’s easiest to picture spending time with friends or mingling at a dinner party (in fact, he was known for his legendar...
7 Touko 20192min
Don’t Sell Out
In his Discourses, Epictetus asks a probing question: “Your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word your freedom. For what would you sell these th...
6 Touko 20192min
Be Sure To Love Them While You Still Can
In one of the darkest passages in all of Stoic thought, Epictetus discusses the prospect of putting your child to bed and saying goodbye to them in your mind as you do so because it may be the last ti...
3 Touko 20194min
Do Your Duty, Every Day, Everywhere
The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy was recently interviewed by the New York Times about his grueling travel schedule, which will include 22 cities this year. This passage of the interview is wo...
2 Touko 20192min
