“When you’re thus practiced and prepared to discriminate between what belongs to you and what doesn’t, what is subject to hindrance and what is not, and are ready to regard the latter as important to you and the former as irrelevant, then is there anyone, any more, you need be frightened of?” -Epictetus
Legal definitions of criminal recklessness across countries and decades have shared the common premise that in order for one to be considered reckless, one must acknowledge their behavior as such. In other words, the actor must actively recognize and consider their act to have been reckless, knowingly endangering themselves or others. Remaining less defined is that of what leads an individual to conscious personal or interpersonal endangerment. Among a range of influencers, one culprit in conscious endangerment, or uncalculated risk, could be the belief that a certain action will compensate for whatever is perceived as lacking. Demonstrated in both the major and the trivial, recklessness, or willful indulgence in non-beneficial acts is, of course, not limited to criminal contexts; binge consumption and shortsighted, spite-driven decisions are broadly-accessible examples. Unchecked desire invites rashness; prolonged unchecked desire invites risk.
The most basic instinct being survival, one could see recklessness as an extreme response to seeing another circumstance as unsurvivable (emotionally or otherwise, and accuracy of judgement notwithstanding), even if the reckless act invites a different or more severe danger. We'd much prefer the danger we create than that which we perceive as inescapable. While the animal's chief aim is survival, it is especially to do so on his or her own terms.
Read more“Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your own best self: for that does fall within your own control.” -Epictetus
Worth remembering about the staple Stoic text that is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is that it was not a book written for public consumption. It was a personal wartime journal Aurelius kept as a means of remaining grounded during the tumultuous periods he endured as Roman Emperor. The broad-reaching utility of its insights aside, the book itself presents a useful meta commentary on the value of knowing who one wants to be. Emperor for 19 years, there was no shortage of temptations to be who others wanted him to be. This journal of epithets to himself reminded him of what mattered, of who he wanted to be, and how he wanted to operate both as a leader and a human. What became known as Meditations was truly his own set of meditative principles that would inform all things. It was his own philosophy of self.
Demonstrated by Marcus Aurelius' efforts in capturing lessons to himself is an awareness of the following: If you do not decide who you are, it will be decided for you.
Read more"Necessity makes even the timid brave." -Sallust
Most fundamentally, necessity precedes action
In Andy Weir’s novel-turned-film The Martian, audiences bear witness to the main character completely defying the odds of surviving alone on Mars by way of feats that plenty would be hard pressed to achieve on earth (building a self-sustaining garden, rationing out meals so as to minimally sustain oneself for an unforeseen period of time, and so on), all while employing a level of science and engineering genius that far surpasses average intelligence. What's significant about this story (beyond its core compelling plot of survival on a not-completely-inhabitable planet), is its depiction of the human spirit—of determined resilience in the face of bleakness. When a certain end result is an absolute and utter necessity, the depth of capability is revealed. The hyperbolic nature of survival scenarios needn't diminish the broader revelation they often serve to illuminate: the undeniable role played by necessity in everything we do.
Read more“So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously.” -Epictetus
A popular adage is the idea that the quality of one’s life is the quality of one’s relationships. While the value of connection and its role in our flourishing should not be diminished, the statement gives way to an externalization of our contentment, positing that its attainment rests not only on a factor outside of us, but on one known to be in a continual state of flux. Relationships change, evolve, stagnate, dissipate. We change, evolve, stagnate, dissipate. If this is true, the notion that our contentment hinges solely on the state of our connection to others at any given moment, for our sake, can’t be. What becomes significant, then, is the ability to effectively process life's transitions in a way that recognizes them as natural, both susceptible to our influence and to elements beyond it.
It’s for this reason that we can confidently anchor in the following: the quality of our life is the quality of our thinking, or more poignantly, the quality of our ability to refine our thinking.
Read more“Do not suppose that, if you find something hard to achieve, it is beyond human capacity; rather, if something is possible and appropriate for man, assume that it must also be within your own reach.” -Marcus Aurelius
One of humanity’s more unifying qualities is the following: we enjoy watching talent on display. One needn’t look any further than the inclination to share an impressive video or to pick up the phone and vote for your Idol favorite (did I just time travel or did you?). Appealing to our lesser selves, this fundamentally correlates to a desire to be entertained; appealing to our higher selves, this comes from a genuine celebration and appreciation of human capability. It reminds us of what an individual can do, illuminating, even for a moment, what we might be able to do as well. This is why performers of all sorts, from the artistic to the athletic, draw crowds—for a blip in time, we get to bear witness to human capability realized, in a way that invites us into it too. A concept well articulated by author James Carse, at their best, creativity and capability on display engender the same in those who witness. This is the difference between performance done in vain and performance that invites. Excellence invites.
Nothing may underscore this quite as well as the feats that take place at the Olympics. American 400-meter hurdler Dalilah Muhammad ran 1.5 seconds faster in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics where she won Silver, than in 2016’s Rio Olympics where she won Gold. (Bears noting that her Tokyo performance set for herself a new personal best. Go Dalilah.) What this reveals for us is this: we don’t always do as well as we can, but as well as we have to.
Read more"Who can doubt...that life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy?" -Seneca
We hear it time and time again: enjoy the process. A step further, many esteemed individuals hold fast to the idea that success requires an enjoyment of, or at least a commitment to, the process. While true for anyone who seeks to accomplish anything of note, we needn’t isolate the significance of process only to pursuits of particular feats of achievement. Contentment in life itself and in its component parts requires an acknowledgement of the following: much of life is process. Much of life is the in between. Life can be milestones (particularly when we imagine the reel of our lives), but most of life’s experiential content is what happens between them—the small comprising and enabling the context for the big. Life is as much ceremonies and summits as are the days of hoping, seeking, sulking, and training that went into them. Life is the whole and the parts, the beginning, middle, and end. It’s you on vacation and the you working diligently before and after it. It’s the business launch and the buildup, as the latter is where the meaningful work took place.
Living well requires the diligent referencing of our own internal barometer. Bombarded with imagery of what living "should" look like, it becomes critical to determine what it looks like for us, and at times even more revealingly, what it doesn’t.
Read more“As Posidonius said, ‘In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.’" -Seneca
Many are familiar with the adage, the only constant is change. What we once knew shape-shifts into the unfamiliar, to then inevitably, by way of exposure, become familiar again. And so the cycle of life goes. We tend to view and experience change from the reactive position, pivoting (oft-painfully) only when called for. An organizational restructure, a new environment, an ended relationship—whatever form the change takes, our instinct to survive enables us to adapt accordingly. This innate ability to respond to changing circumstances, conjuring all creative forces of will as needed, is one of our most tremendous qualities as humans. Jarred for a time we may be, an underlying will to survive eventually surfaces, enabling the response necessary. It’s precisely this innateness that makes responding to change not so much novel as it is expected, as survival requires that we respond to change in some measure of a productive manner. And so, if responding to change is the default operating mechanism in the self-preserving individual, the less-emphasized counterpart is the anticipation of change.
Read more“Be not angry with outward events, for they care nothing for it.” -Euripedes
Natural to the human experience inside a big, indiscriminate world is the sense of feeling out of control—of feeling that the reality of present circumstances is at direct odds with our desires. Our atomic existence on the grand scale makes us highly susceptible to such a feeling. Difficult as it can be to accept at times, life often dictates us—more specifically, the bounds within which we can operate (though not the degree to which we can operate within them), and is wholly uninterested in our plans or preferences. Living well in a brutally objective world requires acutely developed, routinely-evaluated clarity in two things: that which lies within our control, and that which lies outside of it. Once identified, the work then becomes to direct our energy accordingly.
For the person who’s been exposed to any amount of self-development material, the concept of focusing on what’s within one’s control is not a novel one. In fact, overexposure to a superficial version of the concept may desensitize us to it entirely, as it's not merely a matter of focusing on what you can control, but of actively choosing to not emotionally attach yourself to anything you can’t.
A high-functioning understanding of control looks as follows: emotionally aligning yourself only to that which directly relates to your own actions.
Read more“Philosophy has taught [us] to be grateful for life and yet unafraid of dying.” -Donald Robertson
Death occupies the dissonant space comprised of things that are both discomfort-inducing and yet entirely natural. It is life’s natural constant, and yet we’re terrified by it. We fear death because we feel it threatens something—likely a reality we’ve yet to realize, or one of which we’re just on the brink. Rather than fearing the inevitability that is death, perhaps we should fear not living in a way that, when death approaches, we can face it contentedly.
It could be said that many people who fear death aren’t living in a way that justifies that fear. Our tendency to be jolted into action only when we sense a window of opportunity closing indicates our general comfort with coasting. We coast until we can’t anymore, until someone holds us accountable or until our livelihoods depend on taking an action we’ve put off. Our aim, however, is to not require extreme circumstances to show up for our lives.
Read moreIn a deviation from my traditional TPOE post format, I’m taking what many would consider a milestone birthday as an opportunity to capture 30 of the distilled lessons, learnings, and ideas that I’ve amassed by age 30. The below reflects perspectives and positions developed from a combination of personal experience, philosophical sharpening, and general growth. Take what resonates, and leave the rest.
If it doesn’t make you better, reconsider (or avoid) it entirely.
Strive to exist at the intersection of your curiosity and your contribution (in your traditional work, and elsewhere). There’s something to be said for being generally interested in how you spend most of your time.
Parkinson’s Law—stating that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”—is real. Remember and leverage this amidst your efforts accordingly.
Read moreAn abridged version of this piece was originally published in THE STOIC magazine.
“Work with the material you are given.” -Epictetus
The makeup of your life to-date is the sum of the material you’ve been given. Your experiences, your setbacks, who your family is or isn’t, your abilities—the lot we’ve been assigned is out of our control, but what we do with and how we respond to it is. What you’ve just read is arguably the bedrock of Stoicism, and this piece is precisely about what gets us to that sought-after Stoic response—acceptance.
To understand what acceptance is and looks like, we must understand what it is not. Acceptance is not apathy, laziness, or idle helplessness. It’s not the status quo or refusing to push yourself. Acceptance is simply coming to terms with what is real (read: irrefutably, irrevocably true). It has nothing to do with whether you’re happy about said reality, and has everything to do with a peaceful acknowledgement of that thing—that concrete thing—being true.
Acceptance is saying, I care deeply and while this is not preferred, I acknowledge that this is my reality—my responsibility lies in how I bear it. Acceptance is not repeatedly getting angry over something existing. Acceptance transcends that cycle, empowering us to decide what to do given the circumstance.
Read more“And if you are committed to making progress and ready to devote yourself to the effort, then give up everything else. Otherwise your ambivalence will only ensure that you don’t make progress… Formerly, when you were devoted to worthless pursuits, your friends found you congenial company. But you can’t be a hit in both roles. To the extent you cultivate one you will fall short in the other.” -Epictetus
We’re all familiar with the concept of balance: that illusive state of idyllic being for which we spend our days striving. The irony being that sometimes the striving for brings us more stress than what balance is supposed to free us from. We try so hard to be “balanced" that we end up finding we’re not particularly thrilled in any one area. We’re just, tired. On the contrary, imagine being so dialed into exactly what your present circumstances or desires demand of you that you freely make decisions that may seem counterintuitive or painful on the surface, but in actuality, accelerate the time to achieving your goals. Sometimes over-indexing on balance slows us down—and not in the good, “stop and smell the roses” way, but in the way that makes us endure unwanted things for longer than necessary.
And so, what might be better than balance? Clarity. Clarity in what this season demands of you.
Read more“We must act with all urgency, then, not only because we are drawing closer to death at every moment, but also because our power to understand things and pay close attention to them gives out before the end.” -Marcus Aurelius
Many of us are familiar with the phrase, “tyranny of the urgent.” Made popular by the book of the same name, it’s the descriptor for what happens when the emergence of some immediate need (commonly referred to in the corporate world as a “fire”) monopolizes our attention and temporarily supersedes our larger, potentially more important pursuits. It’s called tyranny because of the sense of helplessness that often accompanies these tasks, convincing us we've no other choice but to tend to them. A similar sensation occurs when we’re approaching any sort of deadline. Wrought with anxiety over the consequences of not meeting it, we rally our best efforts and resources to see the project through within the established timeline. As such, the result is astounding: the task gets completed.
There are few things more powerful, more focused, than a person who has to do something, be it for their career, survival, or otherwise. When called to operate at a specific level within specific time bounds to achieve a specific task, we become near-unstoppable.
Read more“For the mind adapts and converts everything that impedes its activities into something that advances its purpose, and a hindrance to its action becomes an aid, and an obstacle on its path helps it on its way.” -Marcus Aurelius
Resilience is one of those qualities we tend to deeply admire in people. It’s the badge of honor we award to the person who was knocked down and got back up again. We could argue that human history itself is the story of resilience—correcting ourselves one failure after another, and coming back even stronger. Tragedy after tragedy, oppressive law after oppressive law, the human spirit thrives ever-still. Stories like that of the African-American female NASA mathematicians in the early 60s depicted in Hidden Figures, and that of the POW World War II survivor, Louis Zamperini, depicted in Unbroken compel us to look inside ourselves and ask what could possibly be holding us back. As impressed as we are by such people, we’re far from certain that we could exhibit the same stamina in similar circumstances. Over time we’ve convinced ourselves that some individuals just have certain qualities, and others just don’t.
While we all have distinct personalities and predispositions, here’s a bit of not-so-breaking news: Qualities can be cultivated. Crass as it may sound, characteristics can be manufactured. What this means is that contrary to the popular belief that resilience is a quality of some but not of others, it can be bred. Well of course it can be! Resilience is bred through trauma! Obvy! But does it have to be?
Read more"In general remember that it is we who torment, we who make difficulties for ourselves—that is, our opinions do." -Epictetus
If you’ve been exposed to any semblance of motivational jargon, you’ve heard the following adage more than once: be fearless. Don’t let fear rule you! Fear is the enemy! The irony of preaching fearlessness as the answer is that achieving this clichéd state isn’t what induces action. Fear itself does that. It could be argued that without fear, we wouldn’t actually do anything. Some of our greatest accomplishments come after moments in which we were filled to the brim with fear—that project launch, that presentation, that pressing question that changed everything. It’s the very harnessing of this fear that leads us to astounding ourselves. With that in mind, it may be safe to conclude that “fearlessness" isn’t what we need; a set of right fears is.
Read more"...it is enough to make good use of what the moment brings." -Marcus Aurelius
Here we are with yet another charged word—fulfillment. It’s that delicate balance of peace and progress, of meaningfulness and mission that we so often find ourselves banging our heads against the wall to strike. It's the thing that, in theory, we intend our every decision to get us closer to. And perhaps that's where we have it wrong—treating fulfillment as a destination, versus a day-to-day state we experience through our actions.
When we think of the word "fulfillment," we tend to immediately picture the abstract, idyllic versions of ourselves and lives that we've yet to realize. Inherently present in the matter of fulfillment is a reflexive tendency to believe that we don't have it yet. What we're missing in this fulfillment-as-a-destination mindset is that fulfillment, in it's truest sense, is the active realization of our compulsions.
Read more"I have the power to act under reservation and turn circumstances to my own advantage." -Marcus Aurelius
It’s the start of a new year—a time when energy and ambitions are at their most palpable. It’s the time when we magically have the fuel to catalyze the reinventions we spent the second half of last year fantasizing about. Even more interesting is the mass perception of the new year as being cause for reinvention (though neither here nor there). I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you have a resolution, it’s one you should’ve made yesterday, or last week, or last month, or the second the desire was conceived. Any goal attached to the turn of a new year is as fickle as time itself. But we’re not here to minimize something as well-intentioned as goal-setting. We’re here to talk about a resolution so essential that without it, true flourishing is impossible.
Read more"Foolish are those who...have no aim to which they can direct every impulse and, indeed, every thought." -Marcus Aurelius
There are few words in the English language so charged as the word, "meaning.” What’s the meaning of life? What’s the meaning of [insert any confusing life event here]? The fact that we ask these questions tells us more about ourselves than the answers to them do. It reveals a desire for there to be more to it all—or perhaps even more revelatory, the need to believe that there is. This is why we find ourselves at various stages of our lives, careers and relationships thinking, what’s the point of this? Where is this going? Our minds overwhelmed with regret or frustration, we spiral into lamenting our decisions. I’d like to put forth an alternative to this lamentation and say that these moments are, instead, causes for celebration—for they serve as the breeding grounds for increased self-awareness. They remind us that in some way, in some area, we’re not quite living in sync with what's meaningful to us. Thus, the more quickly we can discover this discrepancy, the more quickly we can recalibrate.
Read more"Love only that which falls to you and is spun as the thread of your destiny; for what could be better suited to you?" -Marcus Aurelius
How often do we love only that which falls to us? It's far more common that we love that which falls to others. Our genetic makeup, our upbringings, our strengths, and our weaknesses—these are the things that were, as Stoic philosopher and once most-powerful-man-in-the-world Marcus Aurelius put it, spun for us (read: intended for us).
But sometimes we hate what’s spun for us—so much so that we may find the very notion of certain events being meant for or uniquely assigned to us offensive. That heartbreak, that trauma, that undesired physical attribute... It’s rare that we react to such things with contented acceptance. The beauty of this, though, is that if something was meant for us, we don’t have to be broken by it. We’re not somehow less because something just is. We’re simply playing our part and can continue doing so faithfully.
Read more“You become what you give your attention to.” -Epictetus
We’re in an age where attention is the single most sought-after commodity. If something has our attention, it, unequivocally, has us. What we watch, what we read, who we’re around… Whatever consumes our attention consumes and shapes us. It’s essential that we understand that. If you expose yourself to enough negativity, all that you see and do will be colored as such. But of course, we know this, right? It’s the age-old garbage in, garbage out.
Though it’s not just the obvious garbage we must guard ourselves against. I’m not talking about just limiting your intake of reality tv or filthy rap music. What I’m talking about is viewing attention as a finite resource that begs for our diligent allocation and reservation, as something allotted to us that we actively distribute, or don’t distribute. I’m talking about the silent killers that we persist in focusing on, and the life-giving activities that we don’t.
In essence, we have two choices: become masters over our attention, or be mastered by the forces that fight for it.
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