Zoom Out...And Laugh
The way to make all your problems, even the really vexing and painful ones, seem less severe? It comes from Seneca. All you have to do, he says, is:“Draw further back and laugh.”When you zoom out far ...
14 Maalis 20192min
Why You Should Read Biographies
“I don’t have time to read a book that long,” you might say when someone recommends one of those epic volumes from the Ron Chernows and Robert Caros and Stacy Schiffs of the world. And Alban Butler’s ...
13 Maalis 20192min
What Does It Feel Like To Lose All Your Money?
Last year, the writer Chuck Palahniuk received the kind of news that all of us dread. Someone he trusted—the book agent who had represented him for years—had been slowly but steadily robbing him blind...
12 Maalis 20193min
Always, Ever The Same
In his wonderful book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, the Pulitzer Prize winning scholar Stephen Greenblatt spends a lot of time analyzing a pivotal moment early in the life of Saint Augustine, wh...
11 Maalis 20193min
Take What’s Good, Ignore The Rest
One of Seneca’s most powerful strategies comes from his time as a Senator. Speaking again of a thought from Epicurus, with which he only partly agrees, Seneca explains that he is so readily able to dr...
8 Maalis 20194min
Now Is Now
There is a beautiful passage on the last page of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s, The Little House in the Big Woods. She writes of an evening in the cabin with her family, her father playing the fiddle, her mo...
7 Maalis 20192min
Find A Good Outlet For Your Passions
Although today we consider “passion” to be a good thing—as in find your passion—to the Stoics, the passions were something to be wary of. Desire, rivalry, excitement, infatuation, anger. These were po...
6 Maalis 20194min
Is Ego A Virtue?
In 2017, Good Morning Britain anchor Susanna Reid presented her co-anchor (actually she calls him her TV husband), Piers Morgan, a gift. It was a copy of the book Ego is the Enemy. She thought he coul...
5 Maalis 20193min
