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

Ma shlomkhem

THE PHILOSOPHER KING

“For I believe a good king is from the outset and by necessity a philosopher, and the philosopher is from the outset a kingly person.”
—MUSONIUS RUFUS, LECTURES, 8.33.32–34

The Israeli general Herzl Halevi believes that philosophy is essential in his role as a leader and warrior. “People used to tell me that business administration is for the practical life and philosophy is for the spirit,” he said. “Through the years I found it is exactly the opposite—I used philosophy much more practically.” War and leadership offer an unending series of ethical decisions that require priorities, balance, and clarity. That’s what philosophy helps with.

Plato knew this when he imagined a utopia ruled by a philosopher king. “Either philosophers should become kings,” he said in The Republic, “or those now called kings should truly and sufficiently undertake philosophy.” Marcus Aurelius was quite literally that philosopher king. What does that have to do with you?

There are fewer kings these days, but we’re all leaders in one way or another—of families, of companies, of a team, of an audience, of a group of friends, of ourselves. It’s the study of philosophy that cultivates our reason and ethics so that we can do our job well. We can’t just wing it—too many people are counting on us to do it right.

Love the confidence and we need more of this kind of character

woman is born with beauty. A man is born with potential.

That’s the uncomfortable truth.

From the moment a girl hits 18, the world opens up to her.
Attention. Options. Opportunities.
Simply for existing.

Why?

Because female value is front-loaded.
It's biological. Evolutionary.
Youth and beauty are desired.

But a man?

He’s ignored at 18.
Laughed at at 22.
Overlooked at 25.
Only respected when he builds something.

A man’s value is earned.
Through suffering.
Through mastery.
Through becoming something the world can’t ignore.

This is why a man’s life truly begins at 30—
If he used his 20s to build, sharpen, sacrifice.

So stop crying about the game being unfair.
The rules were never designed for your comfort.

They were designed to forge you.

She protects what she has.
You must build what you don’t.

Every rep, every book, every lonely night—it all counts.

Become dangerous.

Then watch how the world finally says your name with respect.

Are you ready to build that kind of value?

Boys be a #men!!!!!

LOVE THE HUMBLE ART

“Love the humble art you have learned, and take rest in it. Pass through the remainder of your days as one who whole-heartedly entrusts all possessions to the gods, making yourself neither a tyrant nor a slave to any person.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS,