Lately, I’ve realized something important: when you’re chasing your dreams and working toward your ultimate goals, your social life often comes at a cost. Friendships, gatherings, and casual connections—many of them will take a backseat.

And that’s okay. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for why you’re busy or why you’re not around. Trying to justify your absence can trap your mind in a subtle, dangerous loop—convincing yourself you’re “working hard” for others instead of yourself.

The truth is, focus is not a social obligation. If you’re busy, keep your work to yourself. Do what needs to be done. Protect your energy, your time, and your purpose.

Distractions will come. Opinions will come. But clarity comes from silence, discipline, and action. Let your work speak for itself.

Ig the stoic of me is coming out😎

Mhmet season 2 Netflix documentary
Season 1 was very interesting. Now season 2

PROTECT THE FLAME

“Protect your own good in all that you do, and as concerns everything else take what is given as far as you can make reasoned use of it. If you don’t, you’ll be unlucky, prone to failure, hindered and stymied.”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.3.11

The goodness inside you is like a small flame, and you are its keeper. It’s your job, today and every day, to make sure that it has enough fuel, that it doesn’t get obstructed or snuffed out.

Every person has their own version of the flame and is responsible for it, just as you are. If they all fail, the world will be much darker—that is something you don’t control. But so long as your flame flickers, there will be some light in the world.

NO ONE SAID IT’D BE EASY

“Good people will do what they find honorable to do, even if it requires hard work; they’ll do it even if it causes them injury; they’ll do it even if it will bring danger. Again, they won’t do what they find base, even if it brings wealth, pleasure, or power. Nothing will deter them from what is honorable, and nothing will lure them into what is base.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 76.18

If doing good was easy, everyone would do it. (And if doing bad wasn’t tempting or attractive, nobody would do it.) The same goes for your duty. If anyone could do it, it would have been assigned to someone else. But instead it was assigned to you.

Thankfully, you’re not like everyone. You’re not afraid of doing what is hard. You can resist superficially attractive rewards. Can’t you?

From the two books I have a difficult time choosing which one I should buy and read

You lead me in the path of life; I experience absolute joy in your presence; you always give me sheer delight.
Psalm 16:11

I RISE AND SHINE

“On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind—I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I am going to do what I’m made for, the very things for which I was put into this world? Or was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It’s so pleasurable. Were you then made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself?” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.1

Its comforting to think that even two thousand years ago the emperor of Rome (who was reportedly a bit of an insomniac) was giving himself a pep talk in order to summon up the willpower to throw the blankets off each morning and get out of bed. From the time we’re first sent off to school until we retire, we’re faced with that same struggle. It’d be nicer to shut our eyes and hit the snooze button a few more times. But we can’t.

Because we have a job to do. Not only do we have the calling we’ve dedicated ourselves to, but we have the larger cause that the Stoics speak about: the greater good. We cannot be of service to ourselves, to other people, or to the world unless we get up and get working—the earlier the better. So c’mon. Get in the shower, have your coffee, and get going.

This is Afar, Ethiopia

Don't believe everything u hear.
Real eyes
Realize
Real lies.
G.O.A.T

OUR DUTY TO LEARN
“This is what you should teach me, how to be like Odysseus—how to love my country, wife and father, and how, even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 88.7b

Many schoolteachers teach The Odyssey all wrong. They teach the dates, they debate whether Homer was really the author or not, whether he was blind, they explain the oral tradition, they tell students what a Cyclops is or how the Trojan Horse worked.

Seneca’s advice to someone studying the classics is to forget all that. The dates, the names, the places —they hardly matter. What matters is the moral. If you got everything else wrong from The Odyssey, but you left understanding the importance of perseverance, the dangers of hubris, the risks of temptation and distraction? Then you really learned something. We’re not trying to ace tests or impress teachers.

We are reading and studying to live, to be good human beings—always and forever.

STOP MONKEYING AROUND
“Enough of this miserable, whining life. Stop monkeying around! Why are you troubled? What’s new here? What’s so confounding? The one responsible? Take a good look. Or just the matter itself? Then look at that. There’s nothing else to look at. And as far as the gods go, by now you could try being more straightforward and kind. It’s the same, whether you’ve examined these things for a hundred years, or only three.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.37

“Character,” Joan Didion would write in one of her best essays, “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” Marcus is urging us not to waste time complaining about what we haven’t got or how things have worked out. We have to quit monkeying around and be the owners of our own lives.

Character can be developed, and when it is, self-respect will ensue. But that means starting and getting serious about it. Not later, not after certain questions have been answered or distractions dealt with, but now. Right now. Taking responsibility is the first step.

To be without this character is the worst of all fates. As Didion put it in “On Self-Respect,” “To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness.” You’re so much better than that.

Shabbat shalom