Emily

21 Ideas From Seneca That Have Made Me More Tranquil

Life, Philosophy / /

Courtney and I decided to do some gardening in our backyard this month. My mom came over to help. She taught us about tree suckers and Lantanas and directed us as we dug holes, mixed fertilizer into the soil, and laid cedar mulch. As I was pushing in a rod for the drip irrigation, Courtney told me to make sure I was putting it in straight.

“Oh yeah, I know, I am.”

“So the reason I said something was because I’m actively watching you not putting it in straight.”

It was hard work, but I enjoyed every minute of it. We talked and laughed and we were all together.

It reminded me of George Horace Lorimer’s Letters From a Self-Made Merchant To His Son, when John Graham, recounting the early days of his marriage, gives his son this advice:

“Your Ma did the cooking, and I hustled for things to cook. . . .  It was pretty rough sailing, you bet, but one way and another we managed to get a huge deal of satisfaction out of it, because we had made up our minds to take our fun as we went along. With most people happiness is something that is always just a day off. But I have made it a rule never to put off being happy till tomorrow. Don’t accept notes for happiness, because you’ll find that when they’re due they’re never paid, but just renewed for another thirty days.”

I just love that. Don’t accept notes for happiness.

It’s so easy to rush, to see the day as something to get through, to be anxious about what we still have to do, to think something’s lacking. It’s alarming how easy it is to remember to slow down and enjoy it. (On our fridge I wrote a reminder: Are you enjoying the day?)

When my time is up, when the next generation takes over, when the next family moves in with their own dreams and expectations and hopes and gardens, I want to be able to say, Have fun! I sure as hell did. I enjoyed my time here. I enjoyed the shit out of it.

Last month, I finished reading Seneca’s Letters on Ethics, which I’ve been making my way through since April. (See below!) He, of course, had a lot to say about enjoying life. He said that a tranquil mind is the ultimate good for a human being, the ultimate joy. And here’s the kicker: because tranquility is the ultimate good, any further delights are mere seasoning. Once you’ve satisfied hunger, eating more won’t make you more satisfied. What good is more water when your thirst is quenched?

But look at the hell we put ourselves through for what amounts to mere seasoning. We sacrifice time with the people we love, time doing the things we love for…what? The possibility of a slight enhancement? And usually, it’s not even that. Usually, it’s the complete opposite—a diminishment. A person will work a humdrum 9 to 5 to help pay their $600 car note. We stay up late watching TV and then are too tired to rise early and work on something we love. We TikTok without noticing the clock doing the same.

Tranquility. I’ve been thinking about this word nonstop. It’s beautiful. It’s our own inner source of strength and comfort. When everything around us is chaotic, it keeps us at peace. It’s light-hearted and cool-headed in adversity. It’s built on how we view things like happiness, virtue, anxiety, death, desire, and envy. And the best part is that tranquility is something you can have anywhere, anytime.

I found 21 ideas from Seneca’s Letters that have helped me to be more tranquil:

1. All virtue is equal; it can’t be measured in degrees. “Its magnitude is fixed”, it’s complete in itself. And because virtue is the foundation for happiness, happiness cannot be measured in degrees either. To think that you’re “less happy” than someone means you’re not happy at all. In fact, you have the ability to be as happy as the happiest person in the world at this very instant because the happiest person in the world has nothing in terms of goodness—the source of true happiness—that you can’t claim for yourself right now. In a prison or mansion, each moment contains an opportunity to practice a virtue, so each moment is an opportunity for total happiness. “If one is not happy [in every situation] one cannot have attained the highest good.”

2. “The happy life is just one life.” It’s an error to think that someone who lives longer and more far-reaching lives better. The measure of a life is based on its fullness. If you’re fulfilled, what does it matter how someone else is fulfilled? One eats less, the other more. What difference does it make? Both are filled.

3. Death can happen at any time—far into the future or in the next instant. So if we fear death, it follows that we would have to be in constant fear. Same with anxiety. Anything can happen at any moment. If you’re anxious about one thing, what’s stopping you from being anxious about everything else?

4. Do whatever you can to get rid of your vices, even if it means ripping your heart out.

5. The healthier we think our mind, the sicker it is.

6. Suffering is not a good thing. But courageously suffering what we must is a good thing. I used this idea on the treadmill the other day (and have used it since). My legs were in pain and I was out of breath and I still had more to run. I thought about how nice it would be to lie on the couch with a cold bottle of Powerade. But then I thought, wait, Powerade on the couch might sound pleasant but it’s not actually good. My body might feel better on the couch, but it won’t increase my tranquility. If anything, it will diminish my tranquility because I didn’t follow through on something important. At this moment, the ultimate good is to stay on the treadmill.

7. The most dangerous threats are inherently short-lived.

8. What good is it to have done something great but against your will? If you complained while doing it? This is how people tear themselves apart; the body goes one way, the mind another. Reluctance is a foolish way to do anything. Willingness is the key. We should approach each task on our toes, not our heels.

9. Feelings cannot exist in the past or future; therefore, pain cannot exist there either.

10. A person’s excellence is found only in what is unique to human beings: sound judgment. It’s what separates us from plants and animals. Dogs can be louder than us. Whales can make a more soothing sound. Our uniqueness lies in our ability to judge properly. Only by sharpening our reasoning can we hope to attain the excellence of a human being.

11. Don’t give your mind over to whoever or whatever happens to be in your vicinity. Whether it’s people or advertisements or something online, keep your mind on the highest things. Have a conversation in your head with a philosopher instead of Joe Schmo you find yourself next to.

12. If you wish to be richer, don’t add to your riches, lessen your desires. If you wish to be more honorable, don’t add to your honors, lessen your desires. If you wish to have more pleasure, don’t add to your pleasures, lessen your desires. If you wish to live a full life into old age, don’t add to your years, lessen your desires.

13. It’s no big deal to shun extravagance—what’s admirable is to shun even necessities. It’s one thing to have contempt for fancy meals. But what about contempt for bread and water, even when you’re hungry and thirsty? ‘But I’ll starve!’ It’s unlikely you’ll actually starve. What’s more likely is that by lacking contempt for your bodily urges, you’ll lose something more important than a meal: you’ll lose command over yourself.

14. It’s rare that a person fears what he should.

15. If all of your actions are directed toward the right things, there is no need to fear anything because everything you do is simply what needs doing. Like the ants who go about their day putting the world in order as best they can, you simply do what you were made to do. What could be scary about that? I used this idea the other day at work, and it boosted my confidence and helped me think on my toes. I was giving a presentation, and a small hint of anxiety started to warm my chest. I thought, oh my gosh, stop being silly and overthinking it. This is my job. It’s no different from eating and sleeping and driving and being myself—I’m just doing what I do. There’s nothing to think about.

16. This led me to another thought. If everything you do is simply what you do, then there’s nothing to calculate, no reason to hesitate. There’s no “being brave”, there’s just being yourself. ‘That was a really brave thing for her to do.’ No, that was a really her thing for her to do. That’s what she does. She moves from one necessary activity to the next and regards the outcome for each as irrelevant.

17. Until you know what to pursue and what to avoid, all your traveling is wandering.

18. Our lifetime is short, a mere blip, the length of a pinprick. There are no vast amounts of time in our lives; how can there be a vast amount of basically nothing? When we say something happened “just now,” that covers a fair portion of our lives, including the past, because our whole lives are so short. So we must be mindful of how we spend even “small” amounts of time—they account for much of our life!

19. Wisdom means always wanting the same things and always rejecting the same things.

20. Not wanting is the same as having; either way, anxiety is relieved.

21. Grateful is the best state of being. It is divine. At the end of my life, I hope to leave grateful and without complaint, as Marcus Aurelius said, “like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.”

Books Read This Month:

–Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis is hilarious. The protagonist, George Babbitt, is caricature-like—an outsized image of the American businessperson. Lewis Sinclair is hilarious in the matter-of-factness he describes what makes his characters tick. Like how Babbitt—the ultimate conformist—is proud of his top-of-the-line alarm clock, happy to wake to such a quality piece of equipment. On paper, he has it all. A lucrative job, a loving family, a big house. Still, he dreams of mistresses and is easily annoyed by his wife and kids. He rides high on boisterous small talk and hearty back-pats with people in his community, only to be irritated moments later when an old lady cuts him off in traffic…only to forget all about it when he gets into his office. It made me think about the silly things we get worked up about. Things we won’t remember next week. Things we won’t even remember in the next hour! Why not save ourselves the trouble and just not get worked up in the first place? The other day, I couldn’t find a parking spot at work and I found myself getting annoyed. Then I thought, Really? You’re getting irritated about this? That’s how Babbitt would react. And I immediately smiled and felt grateful that I have a wonderful job and it’s such a beautiful day and I’m so incredibly lucky to be alive and experience it.

-As I mentioned above, I’ve been working through Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca) by Seneca since April, and I finished it last month. It’s 124 letters Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius on things like joy, gratitude, friendship, ambition, tranquility, how to cope with grief, how to think about death, how to spend your time wisely, what’s worth desiring, what’s worth avoiding. You wonder, how can a book contain so much wisdom? How can a person contain so much wisdom? Reading his letters is like having a conversation with him, and who wouldn’t want to converse with one of the wisest people to have lived? There’s a reason his works have endured through time and why people continue to turn to his writings for comfort and guidance.

–So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson is hilarious. And deep and eye-opening. It’s about, well, public shaming—why it’s a problem and its scary, hidden costs. It’s also superentertaining.

-Oh my goodness, I LOVED When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead by Jerry Weintraub and Rich Cohen. I learned so much about how business works and how deals are made. Weintraub shares how he went from an industry nobody to taking Elvis Presley on a national tour—completely changing the touring business model in the process. And that’s just the start. It’s one entertaining story after another from a guy who had all the top celebrities—Sinatra, Elvis—on speed dial. You realize as you read that it’s a masterclass in confidence, coming up with ideas on the fly, building relationships, and getting things done. And that persistence is even more important than intelligence and connections. Above all, enjoy it. At the age of 72, he reflects, “Savor life, don’t press too hard, don’t worry too much.”

–Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. I LOVED this one too. I’m obsessed. I was hesitant to read it for some reason, but I’m so glad I did. It’s one of the best books on creativity and authenticity I’ve read. Gilbert says the creative life is the best life, how we have treasures buried within us and that hunting for those treasures and bringing them forth is the most fulfilling way to live. I also loved her humility in her personal stories. While working on her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, she asked her then-boyfriend if she could include him in it. “What’s at stake?” he asked. “Nothing,” she replied. “Trust me—nobody reads my books.” To the reader, she continues, “Over twelve million people ended up reading that book.” It’s funny and inspiring. I highly, highly, highly recommend it.

I learned that living authentically means doing more of this

Creativity, Life / /

A few weeks ago, Courtney and I were getting ready to go to a Mercury basketball game when I remembered a quote by Henry David Thoreau that I really love.

“Bubs.”

“Yeah.”

“Our shadows never fall between us and the sun,” I smiled.

“Which shoes should I wear?”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Our shadows never fall between us and the sun. Which shoes should I wear?”

—

Ah, Thoreau. The great philosopher and bucker of convention. His mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said that the ultimate morality is to be a nonconformist. Not in the sense of shirking responsibilities or being “different” for its own sake—that’s just silly—but in following your natural inclinations.

Thoreau lamented how a person works their whole life to earn the right to follow their calling, but by the time they’re able to follow it, they’ve lost the desire to do so:

“This spending of the best part of one’s life, earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have [become one] at once. ‘What!’ exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, ‘is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?’ Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.”

The more I read, the more I see this same idea: living a happy life means living authentically.

What mainly stands in the way of living authentically is what Ray Bradbury called the enemy of life itself: self-consciousness.

—

In the 1980s, Leonard Mlodinow was beginning his career as a physicist at Caltech. He was given total freedom to research whatever he’d like. This sounded great at first—complete freedom—but it soon became clear he had a problem: he didn’t know what to work on. He became increasingly anxious to find a subject to research. String theory was popular, should he study that? What about that other theory that was gaining traction? That would be good to research, right? Desperate to figure out what he should work on, he sought out Nobel Prize winner and fellow physicist Richard Feynman to ask him what he thought. After some probing, Feynman finally said to Mlodinow, “Look, selecting a research problem isn’t like climbing a mountain. You don’t do it just because it is there. If you really believed in string theory, you wouldn’t come here asking me. You’d come here telling me.”

Knowing what to work on is often the hardest part. But at least there’s a good way to know if you’re on the right track: you won’t be looking around to see what everyone else is doing. You’ll have confidence.

That’s what Bryan Cranston, when he’s working as a director and hiring an actor, looks for. “This whole business is a confidence game,” he says. They need to have a little arrogance about them. Not in their private lives, of course, but in their work. Like an athlete who says, I got this, with the game on the line. “If an actor comes in, and I feel flop sweat and need from them, there is almost no chance I will hire them. Not because they are untalented, but because they haven’t yet come to the place where they trust themselves, so how can I trust they’ll be able to do the job with a sense of ease? Confidence is king.”

To not trust ourselves, to dismiss what we think, Alain de Botton said, is to unwittingly ignore the greatness of our own minds. This is extremely sad. He pointed out that Aristotle was peerless because he placed his faith in the fruits of his own thoughts.

Of course, it would be absurd not to read and learn from the wisest people to have lived. But to not supplement this learning with introspection is also unwise. 

Take Montaigne. He believed that we could derive more wisdom from our own life than anywhere else. Relying solely on books, for instance, to explore our curiosity and intellect is detrimental; they cannot account for our own thoughts and feelings. “Were I a good scholar,” he said, “I would find enough in my own experience to make me wise. Whoever recalls his last bout of anger . . . sees the ugliness of this passion better than in Aristotle. . . . Even the life of Cesar is less exemplary for us than our own. . . . we are richer than we think, each one of us.”

In one of my favorite books, The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton quotes Montaigne in saying that great men and women are often not seen as great by their spouses or those who live with them. This might be because they see the private, less pretty moments of life up close. But it also might be due to our curious nature to not find interest in people too close in proximity and age to us. De Botton notes that Montaigne was not saying this out of pity, but as a way of pointing out the “deleterious impulse to think that the truth always has to lie far from us, in another culture, in an ancient library, in the books of people who lived long ago.”

The wisdom is right here, he was saying. In front of you and, more importantly, inside of you. After all, if wisdom begins in knowledge, it must first be perceived within. It’s why the truth always rings true. “In the minds of geniuses,” Emerson said, “we find—once more—our own neglected thoughts.” 

It’s not that geniuses have all these great thoughts that the rest of us don’t have, de Botton says. It’s that they take them more seriously.

Again, this doesn’t mean we have all the answers or that we shouldn’t learn from others. That would be ridiculous. But we do need to trust ourselves more, especially with our own callings and aspirations.

We need to do, as Feynman suggested, less asking and more telling.

One of the best ways to live authentically is to grow in confidence. And the best way to grow in confidence is to take action. Do the thing now, not tomorrow, not when you retire. Wake up a few hours earlier if you have to.

There’s no shortage of pursuits that are comparatively good. But what’s the point of that? Why not pursue the ultimate good and follow your own nature? Why not start now?

—

We got to the basketball game earlier than expected, so we walked around downtown for a while.

Courtney checked her phone. “We still have time to kill.”

She must have noticed me tense up. “I know, I know,” she sighed. “We can’t kill time because time is literally killing us.”

I laughed. “Hey! Now you’re getting it!”

“Fill is what I meant to say,” she said. “We still have time to fill.”

Books Read This Month:

–The Writing Life by Annie Dillard is a short read on writing from one of the greats. One of the things she said that I keep thinking about is how all writing is hard—whether you’re writing a recipe or an email or a text message. All writing takes effort and concentration, so why not work on writing something substantial?

-I really liked Natalie Goldberg’s Writing on Empty, about a recent time in her life when she felt no inspiration to write, and what she did about it. I got some good stuff and enjoyed reading it. If you’re in a writing slump, it may be just the book you need to get you out.

The following books—all highly recommended by Ryan Holiday (he literally never disappoints)—were the best ones I read this month.

–Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. Long before she became one of Japan’s most famous TV personalities, Kuroyanagi, adorably called Totto-Chan in her youth, attended an elementary school that was run by a teacher with a unique approach to learning. Expelled in the first grade from her previous school for her hyperactivity, she excelled in this new one. She tells her story through the eyes of her child self: each day is full of possibilities, everyone is a friend, everything is exciting. Her enthusiasm for every little thing is heart-warming, and it rubbed off on me. I just loved it.

–Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read, period. It’s seriously so good. It might be too good. I told a few people they needed to read it, and when they asked me what it was about, I was a little stumped. It’s hard to put into words. But talking about it with someone who’s read it is a different story. Courtney (a tough critic) read and loved it, and we went back and forth. Oh my gosh, do you remember this part? Wasn’t that hilarious? Oh man, wasn’t that deep? Isn’t that the meaning of everything? Also mixed in is a bit of a murder mystery. Mary Roach called this book perfect. And I agree, it’s just perfect.

–In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger. Wow, what a crazy story. A few years ago, Junger was on the brink of death on the operating table. He describes his experience in gory detail and then meditates on the possibility of an afterlife. It’s a thrilling and hopeful read. I sent it to my dad and he loved it too.

This is what all great men and women have in common

Life, Philosophy, Reading / /

Seneca said that wisdom is always wanting the same things and always rejecting the same things.

You don’t even have to add the stipulation that they are the right things. If they are consistent, they are right.

Consistency. I’ve been thinking about this word a lot with the upcoming presidential election. Its polarity has made inconsistencies stand out like tolerance at a MAGA rally. To value your rights but not a transgender person’s…that’s inconsistent. To love your gay friend but look down on Pride celebrations…inconsistent. To claim to support African Americans by protecting “black jobs”…inconsistent.

Our steps will vary, but our path should remain the same. Laws and policies are debatable. Humanity isn’t.

The people who fight for civil rights and women’s rights are the same people who fight for gay rights and transgender rights. They’ll be the same people in the future, fighting for the next minority group that will be attacked once the mob inevitably loses interest in its current targets. And they will lose interest because passions of the day don’t last. Kindness does.

Take Euripides, the ancient Greek playwright. Wildly unpopular and dismissed in his day (what modern mind isn’t?), his plays made people uncomfortable by challenging their long-held prejudices. He wanted them to think. He wanted people to question conventions, as they were often masks for injustice. His love and compassion for people, especially those unlike him—women, the elderly, peasants, slaves—was so deep that the sadness it caused nearly incapacitated him.

What’s interesting, as Edith Hamilton writes in her phenomenalbook The Greek Way(see below!), is that not long after his death, his popularity swung completely in the opposite direction. People were told incredible stories of what a great man he was. (To this day, more of his plays survive than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined.)

“Dogmatisms of each age wear out,” Hamilton writes. “The heterodoxy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next. The ultimate critique of pure reason is that its results do not endure.” Even Euripides’ biting indictments of the social structure were forgotten. What wasn’t forgotten, what people remembered and so loved him for, found solace in him for, was his sympathy for humanity’s pain, his “courage to tear down old wrongs and never give up seeking for new things that should be good.” It was his kindness that outlasted everything.

Kindness. That sturdy thread that runs through the long line of great men and women. Through the people who root for others and watch out for them. The people who are eager to understand, eager to…

Be a benevolent interpreter

In An Emotional Education, Alain de Botton notes how quickly society judges a person’s worth based on their status. If a person falls on hard times, they’re told to pick themselves up; failure means they didn’t try hard enough. People mostly get what they deserve. “Those who are condemned and broken did something wrong; those who succeeded worked hard and were good.” Their status is an indicator of their decency.

But the ancient Greeks saw it differently: You could do all the right things and still fail. This was the idea behind their tragic dramas. Playwrights like Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles wrote of honest, decent people who made an understandable mistake or were victims of chance and were left ruined or put to death. Audiences were thrilled and frightened. If it could happen to him, they realized, it could happen to any of us.

That’s why we must be generous in our interpretations of others, give them the benefit of the doubt. We’re all doing the best we can with what we have.

This thinking, Alan de Botton says, is an exercise in being kind, yes. But it’s also a way of getting to the truth. Two things which, “when you dive deep into psychology, might be the same thing.”

Lift them up

There was one theme running through Rosanne Cash’s eulogy for her stepmother, June: her kindness.

“In her eyes, there were two kinds of people in the world: those she knew and loved, and those she didn’t know and loved. She looked for the best in everyone; it was a way of life for her. If you pointed out that a particular person was perhaps not totally deserving of her love, and might in fact be somewhat of a lout, she would say, ‘Well, honey, we just have to lift him up.’ She was forever lifting people up. . . . She saw into all your dark corners and deep recesses, saw your potential and possible future, and the gifts you didn’t even know you possessed, and she ‘lifted it up’ for you to see. She did it for all of us, daily, continuously.” 

Fight hate with love

On her way home from school each day, Totto-Chan (whose full name is Tetsuko Kuroyanagi and is one of the most famous talk-show personalities in Japan) would walk by the tenements where Koreans lived. She didn’t know they were Korean, of course, as she was in the first grade. One day, a boy from another school named Masao-chan, who was maybe a year older than her, was standing on top of an embankment. With his hands on his hips and feet apart in an arrogant stance, he shouted at Totto-chan, “Korean!” His voice was full of hatred.

When she got home, she told her mother about it. “Masao-chan called me a Korean,” she said. Her mother put her hand over her mouth. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and her nose reddened. “Poor child,” she said. “People must call him ‘Korean! Korean!’ so often that he thinks it’s a nasty word.” He’s too young to understand, she continued. He probably thinks they are calling him a fool. And because it is said to him so often, he wanted to say something nasty to someone else. “How can people be so cruel?”

Wiping her tears, her mother calmly said to Totto-chan, “You’re Japanese and Masao-chan comes from a country called Korea. But he’s a child, just like you. So, Totto-chan, dear, don’t ever think of people as different. Don’t think, ‘That person’s a Japanese, or this person’s a Korean.’ Be nice to Masao-chan. It’s so sad that some people think other people aren’t nice just because they’re Korean.”

Totto-chan didn’t fully understand, but she did understand that people were mean to Masao-chan for no reason. She decided that if he called her ‘Korean’ again, she would reply, “We’re all children! We’re all the same.” Then, she would try to make him her friend.

Be fair

In his beautiful book Right Thing, Right Now, Ryan Holiday tells the story of famed lawyer Clarence Darrow. Late in his life, needing money, he agreed to do a speaking tour around the country debating other speakers onstage. His contract was $500 per event and $50 for expenses. After the first event, Darrow learned that the promoter made only $150 after costs and fees. Darrow was aghast at the unfairness of it. He gave his $50 expense money to the promoter and another $100 from his own check. Even later, when the profits had risen, Darrow kept his speaking fee to the original agreed on price. His partner explained, in admiration, “Mr. Darrow always leaned over backward to give men the best part of the deal.”

“At the end of our lives,” Ryan writes in the afterword, “we won’t care that much if people think we were hardworking or that the risks we’ve taken in our careers have paid off. We’ll want someone to say, ‘That was a good person. They were honest and decent and generous and loyal and kind. They made the world a better place.’”

Books Read This Month:

–Left of Bang by Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley is a good supplement to The Gift of Fear, which, as I’ve said, reads in part like a thriller and is one of my favorite books. I think everyone, women especially, should read it. A favorite takeaway: be wary of unsolicited promises. Anyway, Left of Bang is also about spotting signs of potential danger. I mostly skimmed the more military-oriented chapters, but the stuff about people and how surprisingly predictable they are is fascinating and potentially life-saving.

–The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton is SO good. Oh my goodness, it’s phenomenal. (The pile of notes I’ve taken is almost an inch thick.) The ancient Greeks were the pinnacle of human excellence. The way they thought and the art they produced “has never been surpassed and very rarely equaled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world.” The Greeks LOVED life. They loved work, and they loved play. They loved leisure, which they used for intellectual pursuits. They were sociable. They thought for themselves. They found truth in both the rational and the spiritual, science and poetry. (A radical notion even today.) The mind and spirit were one. They were wise but not reclusive, lovers of wisdom with the charisma and vigor of a high school football captain. Seriously, this book is a masterpiece.

-I randomly came across The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr while browsing at Changing Hands Bookstore this month and was surprised I’d never heard of it. I blazed through it and got loads of good stuff on what makes a story—specifically a memoir, one of my favorite genres—work. 

-I loved This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. He shares his experience growing up with his free-spirited mother and his unpredictable, emotionally abusive stepfather. From reading Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir, I noticed specific reasons why this memoir works so well: One, Wolff’s adolescent voice is so distinct we don’t question it’s him talking to us. (Similar to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird). Two, he doesn’t tell us only the bad things his stepfather did. That would put us to sleep. What drives the story are the moments of hope mixed in, the times his stepfather was nice to him. And three, he endears himself to us with his candid telling of his shameful and embarrassing moments. Such a good read and one of my favorite memoirs.

-I usually plan which books I’ll read next, but I pulled Creativity Sucks by Phil Hansen off my shelf randomly during a break from writing. Thirty minutes later, I was still standing there reading. It’s an easy read about balancing the demands of daily life with creativity. What’s interesting is that I almost quit reading it a few times. Not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because I thought I should be reading something…denser? But then I remembered (because the day before, I had read some of my journals from 2013) that a relatively light book played a part in where I am today. Had it not been for Jeffrey Gitomer’s The Little Black Book of Connections that I bought (with my mom’s credit card because I had no money) on a whim at the O’Hare airport, there’s a good chance I might never have started talking with Courtney. It’s a long story but my point is that if you’re getting something from a book, keep reading it. Anyway, one of my biggest takeaways was Hansen’s method for creating on demand, systematically. How else can we create consistently? I also loved his idea of separating the mental work from the physical. The mental work can be done during your commute, washing dishes, etc. That way, when you get to your desk, you can spend your time physically creating. Highly recommend!

A few thoughts on doing deep, focused work each day…

Creativity / /

-Don’t let your job and other responsibilities hold you back. You can be a professional writer one hour a day.

-Know what you will work on that day. How has Ryan Holiday been able to write more than a dozen books in as many years? He says that when he sits down to write, his goal is not, “finish the rough draft,” or “write until noon.” His goal is “write section 2 of chapter 3.”

-Set a stop time. Writing without a stop time is torture, Jerry Seinfeld said. “It’s like if you hire a trainer to get in shape, and you ask, ‘How long is the session?’ And he says, ‘It’s open-ended.’ Forget it. I’m not doing it.” If you’re going to sit down and write, there has to be a reward for that. “And the reward is the alarm goes off and you’re done.”

-Write every day. It adds up. Simon Sinek put it like this: “It’s like exercising or brushing your teeth. You don’t get in shape by going to the gym for 8 hours a few times a year. You get in shape by going to the gym for 30 minutes four or five or six days a week.”

-If you can, write at the same time each day. This will train your subconscious—your creativity—to kick in.

If I could share only a few of my favorite writing tips for showing up and staying on track, it would be these:

Creativity / /

-Be less concerned with writing well and more concerned with sharing good ideas.

-What, exactly, are you trying to say? Say that.

-Good writing isn’t about something. It’s for someone. Pretend like you’re writing to a friend.

-The biggest problem writers face, says Ryan Holiday, is that they have nothing to actually say. Writing for the sake of writing isn’t the point. What can you not not say?

-Don’t worry about finding your voice. Just write as clearly as you can. An authentic voice follows clear writing.

-If it doesn’t excite you, don’t write about it.

-At every stage of the writing process, ask yourself, what is this thing about? What is the theme? Sometimes finding the theme is hard. You may not even know the theme while you’re writing. But never stop trying to find it.

-Writers don’t get writer’s block. Writers get caught up in thinking about whether their writing is good or bad.

-Steven Pressfield said to sit without hope and without fear. To work at your desk without the hope of writing something good nor the fear of writing something bad. He explains, “When I sit down to write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or for the day’s work. My only goal is to put in three or four hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don’t judge myself on quality. I don’t hold myself accountable for quantity. The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best?”

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