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do what is right.

good read from today's "Daily Stoic" -
"Harry Truman was a tremendously unpopular president. Just look at the decisions he had to make during his tenure: dropping the Atomic Bomb. Twice. The Berlin Airlift. The Korean War. Desegregating the Armed Forces. Nationalizing steel mills during a labor strike. Firing corrupt IRS officials taking bribes.
As a leader, or as someone aspiring to leadership, it’s important to know this going in: You will not be showered with praise for doing the right thing; you will not be given the benefit of the doubt for making hard, but necessary, choices.
On the contrary, the knaves will twist your words to make a trap for fools. You will be attacked. You will have your motives questioned. You will not be appreciated. Not now, maybe not even until long after you’re gone (like Truman eventually was) or ever (as Marcus Aurelius underrated-ness attests).
But should this stop you? No, it should not. It cannot. Because you must do what is right, what is best. For you and for those who need your leadership.
We do what’s right because it’s right. Because we are the leader. Because it is our duty. The rest doesn’t matter."

just do it well

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a janitor or a junior senator. It doesn’t matter whether you’re negotiating a multi-million dollar deal or negotiating traffic on the way to your unpaid internship. What matters is what you do with this time. What matters is how you manage it.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it’s possible to live a good life and to be a good Stoic. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

ok to cry

We know that Marcus Aurelius cried when he was told that his favorite tutor passed away. We know that he cried that day in court, when he was overseeing a case and the attorney mentioned the countless souls who perished in the plague that had ravaged Rome.

We can imagine Marcus cried many other times. This was a man who was betrayed by one of his most trusted generals. This was a man who lost his wife of 35 years. This was a man who lost eight children, including all but one of his sons. Marcus didn’t weep because he was weak. He didn’t weep because he was un-Stoic. He cried because he was human. Because these very painful experiences made him sad.

Antoninus, Marcus’s stepfather, seemed to be a bit more in touch with his emotions than his young stepson. He seemed to understand how hard Marcus worked to master his temper and his ambitions and his temptations and that this occasionally made him feel bottled up. So when his stepson’s tutor died and he watched the boy sob uncontrollably, he wouldn’t allow anyone to try to calm him down or remind him of the need for a prince to maintain his composure. “Neither philosophy nor empire,” Antoninus said, “takes away natural feeling.”

The same goes for you. No matter how much philosophy you’ve read. No matter how much older you’ve gotten or how important your position or how many eyes are on you. It’s OK to cry. You’re only human. It’s okay to act like one.

C'mon man.

Like you’ve never cut in line, on purpose or on accident. Like you’ve never done something selfish or spoken with an attitude. Like you’ve never been jealous or petty or mean. Of course you have. You’ve done all these things. We all have. Yet when other people do them, it’s somehow different. It’s a transgression. A violation. That’s why we stew. We plot. We shower them with insults. Because when they do it, it’s intentional, it’s a sign of bad character, it must be stopped. C’mon. Remember when we butt up against someone else’s awfulness, to always remember when we ourselves have behaved like that. Marcus writes patiently about considering the motivations of the person responsible, of trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, of considering the crazy possibility that they aren’t irredeemable assholes. Who knows, they may even think they’re doing the right thing! So whatever it is that’s pissing you off today, let it go. We are all plenty guilty of our own sins and stupidity. Which is why we need to forgive and forget other people’s. We need to give them the same clemency and patience we grant to ourselves (which is to say, basically, an unlimited amount). This is the essence of the Golden Rule. It’s easy to treat others the way you would like to be treated when everything is looking up. It’s when the chips are down that the Golden Rule is hardest to employ, which of course is when it is most important of all.

live to the fullest

By thinking, by imagining that we’ve just been given a few months to live, we can see immediately what we should stop doing. We realize we don’t have time to waste. And before you know it there is this urgent emergent need to do the things we love in place of the things we hate.

This is the positive side of the memento mori thought exercise: not “What would I stop doing?” but rather “What would I start doing?” How would I spend the limited time I had left? Where would I find meaning and purpose and joy?

The truth is that none of us know whether we will get to it later (of course, the tricky part is that we don’t know that we won’t either). So we must use this as a test. If you knew you were dying, what would you do more of? What would mortality prioritize for you?

Do more of it today. Because you are mortal. You are dying...fast or slow, nobody knows which.

anger

Anger always goes together with confusion, with ignorance.

Witty retorts!

These insults are from an era “before” the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words.
1. "He had delusions of adequacy ” Walter Kerr
2. "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
3. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. - Clarence Darrow
4. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
5. "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
6. "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it.” - Moses Hadas
7. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” - Mark Twain
8. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” - Oscar Wilde
9. "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
10. "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one.” - Winston Churchill, in response
11. "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here” - Stephen Bishop
12. "He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” - John Bright
13. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.” - Irvin S. Cobb
14. "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” - Samuel Johnson
15. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. - Paul Keating
16. "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” - Forrest Tucker
17. "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” - Mark Twain
18. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” - Mae West
19. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” - Oscar Wilde
20. "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.” - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
21. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music.” - Billy Wilder
22. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I'm afraid this wasn't it.” - Groucho Marx
23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison." He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
24. "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln
25. "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -- Jack E. Leonard
26. "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." -- Thomas Brackett Reed
27. "He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." -- James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

goes without saying ....

This should be the standard by which we judge all our endeavors, professions, relationships and indeed our lives themselves. Did we add value or extract it? Did we improve things or muddle them? Did we kick the can down the road on problems or did we solve them? Did we leave things in a better place than we found them?

We must leave things better than we found them. That’s our job.But what really matters is us. What kind of impact are we having on our industry? What kind of force are we in our neighborhood? Are we going to leave a broken, failing climate to our children? Are we going to run the economy hot for ourselves, knowing it will inevitably crash (and be some other generation’s problem?)

We must leave things better than we found them. That’s our job.

Winding roads for all

All the roads we have to walk are winding. Even the lucky among us experience misfortune. Even the greats have to struggle and endure.

So what makes you think that you deserve an easy path? What makes you think that would even be desirable? It’s the winding road that teaches us, that makes us stronger, that helps us become who we were meant to be. You might seem lost right now, but bear with it. You might feel triumphant right now...well get ready.

There are twists and turns coming. But fear not: They are going to make you great. Or rather, they can make you great, if you choose.