If It’s Not Simple, It’s Bullshit
There’s not much in Stoicism that’s particularly groundbreaking: Focus on what you can control. Be a good person. Manage your emotions. A lot of the famous Stoic quotes are pretty basic too: Epictetus...
9 Jan 20192min
Find A Point!
Peter Barton’s beautiful memoir, Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived, takes readers along a man’s search for meaning when he’s forced to confront mortality. Struggling for a reason to persist amid ...
8 Jan 20193min
The Habit You Must Start This Year
Why does Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations speak to us so? The answer, ironically, is that because the author had zero intention of doing so—in fact, he probably would have been mortified to know how well...
7 Jan 20193min
The One Thing You Must Avoid
Imagine this. You’ve worked for years on this novel—one that is indisputably the best thing you’ve ever done. You manage to get a publisher to buy it. You start to get rave reviews. You sell out your ...
4 Jan 20193min
Do The Little Thing, It’s All The Matters
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza, as the Prague Spring happens and the Soviets begin a military occupation, takes the time to rescue a crow that was hurt on the side of the road. Yet when ...
3 Jan 20193min
It’s Not How Long You Live, It’s How You Live
In late December, Richard Overton passed away at the ripe old age of 112 and 230 days. When he was born, Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States, and the 13th Amendment, which ended slav...
2 Jan 20193min
Keep These Thoughts At Hand, Everyday
The Stoics were all about routine and concentration. Epictetus said that philosophy was something that should be kept at hand every day and night. Indeed, his book Enchiridion, actually means “small t...
1 Jan 20194min
What We Do In Life Does Not Echo In Eternity
In the movie Gladiator, Maximus, the protege of Marcus Aurelius, says famously, “What we do in life, echoes in eternity.” It’s a powerful, inspiring line, (also tattooed on Lebron James’s arm) one the...
31 Dec 20183min
