Sure, you want to explode. But remember this: Despite your explosion, people will still do as they always have. Here is the most important thing: Do not stress. After all, everything is going according to the way of the web of existence, the laws of nature. In a very short time, you will be nobody and nowhere, just like Hadrian and Augustus. Fix your eyes steadily on what it is you are doing. Remember: It is your duty to be a virtuous person acting in accordance with nature. Do that without fail and speak justly, as you understand justice. Speak justly with temperance and modesty and without hypocrisy. (Meditations, 8.4–8.5)

4. 24: If you want tranquility, focus. Isn’t it best to focus on what it takes to be a decent social animal? Such actions bring not only…

Choice is one of the cornerstones of liberalism. In 1859 the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–73) published his book On Liberty (co-written with his wife, the philosopher Harriet Taylor Mill [1807–1858]). In On Liberty, Mrs. and Mr. Mill differentiate between “liberty” (defined as maximized personal freedom) and authority (defined…

Some things hurry into existence as other things hurry out, and many of those things hurrying into existence are already dying. Motion and…

Most definitions of “self” that I have seen define the term as something about “essential being.” What we call the self is a human being’s essence. That is, I think, the popularly understood definition. The challenge with that definition is that we are always putting some sort of description in…

You are the riveted steel. You are the stainless,

Long ago Jesus talked about neighbors (Luke 10:25–37) and what a neighbor is. The answer was: everybody. That answer worked in the industrial world, but it is insufficient for our time and place. Take for example a few words from the University of Chicago professor of ethics Martha Nussbaum: New…

from Meditations:

If the search is for truth or Truth, the most sensible thing to do is search as many places as possible, right? You might think so. Yet how many people walk to particular drawers, pull them out, and only search for truth in one drawer. A drawer marked “Christianity” for…