Philosophy

You flee along with yourself

Life, Philosophy / /

In 2006, Jackass star Steve-O was at the height of his career. At the red-carpet movie premiere for the second Jackass movie, he felt on top of the world. Or so one would have thought. But, as he recently shared, he felt like he was at his own funeral. He worried he and his team would never again produce something as good, that it would be downhill from there. On top of that, he was terrified his fame would disappear any moment. These worries spiraled into addictions, arrests, an intervention, and a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold after he emailed friends saying that he was, “ready to die.” Destructive behavior would consume him for the next 8 years.

It’s shocking, isn’t it? Here’s a guy who got everything he wanted, only to feel like he was at his own funeral. 

But it’s also not shocking. It’s natural to think that money or fame or status will fix us. But, of course, it never does. External things can’t penetrate the mind; a mind prone to worry will worry regardless of circumstances.

Quoting Socrates, Seneca wrote, “All your bustle is useless . . . You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you. . . .because you flee along with yourself.” If you want to escape anxiety, he continued, “what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person . . . . You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.”

This isn’t just Western philosophy. The Buddha also recognized our inclination to search for happiness outside of ourselves. As Karen Armstrong writes, the Buddha believed humans were unhappy because they were “ceaselessly yearning to become something else, go somewhere else, and acquire something they do not have. . . .”

The problem is that if we don’t maintain our perspective, the goalposts move. No matter where we go or how much we acquire, it eventually becomes normal. We end up in an endless cycle of needing more.

Soon after Henry Ford created his assembly line in 1913, a huge problem arose: employees kept quitting. They would simply walk out midshift. The work provided no cognitive stimulation or personal satisfaction or agency. In other words, it sucked. The attrition rate was so bad that when Ford needed to hire 100 employees, he had to hire 963. It was costing a fortune. He needed a way to cut costs and increase production. His solution: he would increase wages.

The results were incredible. Employee attrition plummeted; the pay was too good to leave. Ford called the wage increase, “one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made.” Then he sped up the conveyor belt. Production tripled. Employees were working harder and faster, anxious to keep their well-paying jobs and maintain their new lifestyles—lifestyles that had grown with their income, “keeping them,” as Jackson Lears said, “at routinized jobs in factories and offices, graying but in harness, meeting payments regularly.”

That image—graying in harness—reminds me of a short comic strip I saw years ago: a young guy sprinting after a flurry of money, eventually collecting a sizable amount, only to look up and see he’s now an old man.

It’s not that we lose sight of what’s important on purpose. It’s just that it’s so natural and easy to think we’re lacking something when we’re not. That’s why one of my favorite parts in Epicurus’s The Art of Happinessis when he talks about how little our nature requires. Nature doesn’t care if your house “does not gleam with silver and flash with gold and if there are no paneled and gilded ceilings re-echoing to the lute,” he said. Nature has everything it needs, content to “recline on the soft grass beneath the branches of a tall tree near a stream of water and joyously care for their bodily wants at no great expense.”

This, Epicurus says, proves that power and riches “in no way profit the body of a man.” He adds that they don’t profit the mind, either. It’s our imagination that makes us feel something is lacking when it isn’t. (Our imagination is what marketers—dubbed “consumption engineers” in the early twentieth century—play on.)

The Roman poet, Horace, who wrote much about contentment, said that the good life is found in having what is sufficient, and a steady mind. Reason and good sense banish anxiety, not vacations and luxury.

Besides, he continues:

“If neither Phrygian marble or the wearing of purple that surpasses the brightness of stars, cannot relieve the sick man … Why should I labor to build a hall with doorposts to attract envy? … Why should I exchange my [modest home] for riches that bring bigger burdens?”

His psychological message, Stephen Harrison writes, “is that great riches bring anxiety rather than escape from it.”

This is true for us just as it was true for Steve-O. It wasn’t until he went to work on himself that he turned his life around. It wasn’t until he stopped counting his bedpost notches, and started counting his days of celibacy, that he found happiness.

Rich is the person who adds bricks not to what can be blown down or taken away, but to their inner citadel—that reliable place of resilience, calm, virtue, and wisdom inside us all. The place we can flee to whenever we’d like, and come back better for it. The place that fortifies us as we fortify it.

Bolster that place and rest easy knowing that wherever you go, whatever you do, it will be right there with you.

Books read this month:

–The Wright Brothers by David McCullough was so good I added it to my list of favorite books. I loved how stoic the brothers were, how they went about their work diligently and without frenzy. How Wilbur whistled while he worked, refusing to rush preparations on his plane even as a large crowd and impatient reporters waited for him to fly. What I found especially beautiful was how loving and supportive their family was. Just a great book and McCullough’s smooth writing made the pages (I really didn’t mean to add a pun here) fly by.

–His Majesty’s Airship by S. C. Gwynne is another book I’d been wanting to read, and I thought it would be a good follow-up to The Wright Brothers. Imagine: a giant airship, about 6 acres in surface area, with a cloth-like exterior, full of people and helium, nearly impossible to steer, reactive to the tiniest shifts in weather, ready to explode at the slightest bump, moving slowly and at low altitude over the city. Why anyone thought these balloons would be the future of travel is beyond most historians, though the answers lie somewhere in ego, ignorance, good intentions, and a tragically flawed sense of competition.

-I loved David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers so much that I read another of his, John Adams, which I also quickly added to my list of favorite books. Wow, I didn’t know what a great guy Adams was, how strongly he opposed slavery and supported women’s rights. And unlike his peers, he actually practiced what he preached. He had an unflinching sense of duty, acted urgently, and was committed to his family. And through all of his professional and personal hardships, he did his best to move forward in good spirits.

-After reading and loving The Daily Thoreau last month, I decided to read Henry David Thoreau’s Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, and I LOVED it. It’s one of the best books I’ve read. Thoreau spent years living in a self-sufficient home in the New England woods and wrote about his experience. His goal was to live simply, and he encouraged his readers to do the same. One of my favorite stories is how he decorated his desk with 3 pieces of limestone, only to be horrified when he realized they required daily dusting. Throwing them out of his window in disgust, he wondered why he would dust his furniture “when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still. . . . I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.”

Commit once and for all

Life, Philosophy / /

About a month ago, a new policy was announced at work.

It wasn’t anything crazy, but I was annoyed, and I complained to Courtney and my parents. The more I thought about it, the more miserable I made myself.

A few weeks later, I was notating Epictetus’s Enchiridion.

“You want to win at the Olympics? So do I—who doesn’t?” Epictetus said to a student. But before you jump in, reflect on what that entails: you’ll need to adopt a strict diet, a brutal exercise regimen, and submit completely to a trainer. Your ankles will likely swell. You’ll sustain injuries and swallow mouthfuls of sand. Oh and after all that you still might lose.

If, after considering everything you’ll have to do, you still want to be an Olympian…then do it wholeheartedly, he said. Don’t pause to think about it or you will end up jumping from one infatuation to the next. You’ll be like a child; one day they want to be a gladiator, the next day a musician, the next an actor, and so on. Give your pursuit sincere attention and commit with all your heart.

He then applies this lesson to life.

You claim to want serenity and freedom and peace, but are you willing to pay the price? Are you willing to change the way you eat and drink? Are you willing to put up with nights of pain? To be criticized? To forfeit status and power? Willing to moderate your desires and aversions? To be okay with getting the small end of the stick in even the tiniest matters? In a word, are you willing to live as a philosopher?

If you’re unwilling, don’t go near it, he says. Walk away. You can’t be a philosopher one day and someone else the next. You can only be one person. Make your decision, and commit once and for all.

This struck me with a force that’s hard to describe.

You say you want freedom, yet here you are, troubled.

Commit once and for all.

Every day the next week, I wrote, “Commit once and for all” on the back of my hand. I took a thick, black Expo marker and scrawled the phrase on the bathroom mirror. I needed reminders. I had been using philosophy in some parts of my life, but clearly not in others. 

One of my favorite passages from Epictetus is where he says if people truly grasped how short life is, they would never entertain miserable thoughts. He didn’t say they would never entertain a miserable thought unless something seemed unfair, or unless a situation felt overwhelming, or unless someone pissed them off. They just wouldn’t entertain those thoughts, period.

It’s important to note that he wasn’t talking about negative thinking, which we know can be used, paradoxically, to increase positivity. He was talking about thoughts that do nothing but make you feel miserable.

Epictetus spent the first 30 years of his life as a slave. One day, his master, feeling especially cruel, grabbed Epictetus’s leg and began to twist it. “If you keep doing that,” Epictetus told him, “you’re going to snap it.” The master kept twisting. Epictetus’s leg snapped. “See,” Epictetus said calmly. “I told you that would happen.” 

It’s not that Epictetus didn’t feel pain. Of course he did. But his philosophy said things outside of his control could not harm him. That his leg is broken? That is objectively true. That he’s harmed by it? That was up to him. And his commitment to his philosophy was greater than his broken leg. 

Seneca had a respiratory illness that sometimes made it hard to breathe. When it flared, he would spend days in bed, in a state of near suffocation. Writing about these experiences to his friend Lucilius, Seneca said that even though his body was in anguish, his mind was at ease. “Even while suffocating,” he reflected, “I did not stop resting serenely in brave and cheerful thoughts.” The Epicurean philosopher, Epicurus, was in excruciating pain on what he knew would be (and was) his last day on earth. Still, he wrote that he felt a “gladness of mind” by recalling pleasant memories of conversations with friends.

Like Epictetus, Seneca and Epicurus were not immune to pain. In fact, their empathetic natures probably amplified their pain at times. But here they were, nearly suffocating and dying, still committed to their philosophy, still not letting outside things harm them, still feeling “gladness of mind”. Not in a “toxic positivity” way—they weren’t smiling and saying, ‘Aw gee, shucks, isn’t this great?’—but in the contented way that comes from soberly processing negative emotions and calmly accepting what they could not control.

These were people who were committed. This is who they were; the situation wouldn’t change them.

Commit once and for all. This was my wake-up call and a reminder that I can’t pick and choose where I use philosophy. Like an Olympic athlete, I must be totally committed. 

So a policy changed at work? And? Why are you thinking about it now anyway?  It doesn’t take effect until next year. Besides, think of how lucky you are to have this job and the wonderful people you’ve met because of it.

You’ll find a way to use this to your advantage. You’ll see it’s for the best.

P.S. It turns out the new policy won’t change things that much. This brings to mind another stoic principle I had disregarded: don’t suffer before it’s necessary or you’ll suffer more than is necessary. But more on that another time.

P.P.S. Courtney woke up to my mirror reminder. She sent me this pic while I was at work, saying it had scared the shit out of her.

Books Read

-I loved The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It’s a story about the Chicago World’s Fair, the architects who built it, and the serial killer who used it to lure his victims. What makes it even creepier is that it’s true.

–How To Do the Right Thing by Seneca was great. It’s part of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, a collection of books that take individual philosophers’ works and piece together writings on a narrow topic. Other books of theirs I’ve enjoyed: How to Be Free, How to Keep Your Cool, How to Be a Leader,How to Be a Bad Emperor, How to Give, How to Be Content.

-I loved Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money, so I preordered and read his newest book Same as Ever, a collection of stories about what doesn’t change. I found some great reminders: the better story wins, risk is what you don’t see, the magic of compounding. Other topics that made me think: the importance of imperfection, the short lifespan of competitive advantage, and the simplicity of most things (and how and why we complicate them).

-I was hesitant to read Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson because I wasn’t sure how transparent it would be. But then I saw that Isaacson referred to Musk as a man-child, and I dove right in. Wow…this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s an up-close view of how one of the most wildly successful entrepreneurs operates and makes decisions. It made me see Musk in a new light. I had a hard time putting it down. A very hard time. The short chapters and loads of pictures made it a fast read too. I didn’t want it to end.

12 more things I learned or found useful in 2023

Life, Philosophy, Reading / /

1. We don’t need more time, we need more focus. We all have the same, fixed amount of time in a day. But with a little mindfulness, we can expand our time. Think about all the things you can do in 15 minutes. You can read a few pages of a book. You can call your mom. You can help your spouse prepare dinner. Now think about all the ways 15 minutes can slip by without notice. Scrolling through newsfeeds, small talk, zoning out in front of the TV. Seneca put it best when he said that time doesn’t slow down to let us know it’s passing by. It’s our responsibility to mind it. We can’t create more time, but we can put the time we do have to good use.

2. The best way to show someone respect is by doing your best.

3. Donald Miller said, “A good movie has memorable scenes and so does a good life.” I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially when I’m out with family and friends. What’s a little extra something we could do to make this more memorable?

4. Don’t let your days become one chore after another. Life requires balance. And space.

5. Setting time limits can relieve stress. For almost a decade, I’ve had the same system for notating the books I read. After I finish a book, I put it in a “to-notate” pile. Later, with notecards and pen in hand, I systematically go back through them and jot down the parts I marked. Recently, I was overwhelmed by the ever-growing stack of books in the “to-notate” pile. This was supposed to be fun, not stressful! So, I decided to impose a time limit. I don’t allow myself to take notes for more than 2 hours a week (or roughly 10-20 minutes per day). Putting this limit on myself made the process fun again and allowed me to enjoy my free time more. Plus, the time limit forces me to write down only the best stuff from each book. Then, on to the next.

6. Getting up early is the key ingredient to living a better life. Ernest Dimnet said, “An hour in the morning is worth two.” I’ve thought about that for years now, and it’s true.

7. I’m always thinking about how short life is. Or rather, I’m highly mindful of how I spend my time. Or, perhaps more precisely, you could say I’m obsessed with weeding out the inessential from my life. (Sometimes to a fault). Why would I accept a promotion if it meant less time with my wife? Why would I allow my schedule to be too packed to see my parents every week and help them when they need it? Why would I spend an hour at the grocery store when I can spend an hour outside playing with my dog and have the groceries delivered?  Why would I go to a gym when I have the equipment at home? I can imagine someone reading this and thinking, gee whiz, just live your life. But to me, this is living my life! Hanging out with my wife, helping my parents, playing with my dog, creating space for spontaneity—that’s the stuff that makes life worth living (and makes me the luckiest person)! That’s how I want to live my life, surrounded by what’s most important. The 2 quotes I read this year that have really shaped my thinking on this:

     Epictetus: “If we keep in mind constantly how short our life is, we will realize there is no room for excess.”

     Seneca: “We don’t have enough time for what’s necessary, let alone what’s unnecessary.”

8. What if we replaced the word envy with admire? We can be quick to shut down thoughts of envy. But, Alain de Botton says, if we take a moment to explore this feeling, we may find what lies beneath is not envy, but admiration. And we usually don’t envy someone’s entire life. Usually, it’s just a part that we envy (admire). And once you’re clear about what you admire, you can work to incorporate it into your own life. Let’s say you envy a successful entrepreneur’s life. You dig a little deeper and realize you don’t actually envy her life—it’s too hectic. What you envy, or admire, is her flexible schedule. Knowing precisely what it is you admire—her autonomy—gives you a clearer vision of what you’d like in your own life. You can then take steps and, say, make a career change to have more flexible work hours. You can repeat this process on multiple people, taking bits and pieces you admire, and fitting them together to create your ideal life.

9. With anything you endeavor to do, the whole point is to have fun. Do the things that you find most interesting.

10. Richard Feynman on happiness: “My rule is when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you’re happy, don’t. Why spoil it? You’re probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you’d just spoil it to know it.”

11. A contented state of being is the most sustainable form of happiness. Epicurus placed pleasure into two categories: active and static. Using food as an example, active pleasure is the pleasure you get from eating. Static pleasure is the pleasure of no longer being hungry. Epicurus believed static pleasure to be superior. When it comes to eating, the ultimate goal is not more pleasure from more food (active), but the contentedness of not being hungry (static). Active pleasures create a desire for more, meaning there’s never enough. Static pleasure is at total peace in and of itself.

12. I’ve been thinking about a quote of Stephen Marche’s every time I want to end my workout early: “Without struggle there is the struggle of no struggle.”

Books Read

-I read Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and wow. Wow, wow, wow. In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were mysteriously killed, one by one. It’s a shocking true story of greed and betrayal. I audibly gasped a few times while reading. Like the book Dead Wake (see below), it’s the perfect mix of history and suspenseful storytelling.  

–What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. I LOVED this book. It’s a memoir centered on running and how it facilitates his writing. Making a living as a novelist for more than 40 years takes an incredible amount of stamina. Most authors write a novel or 2, then move on to something else; life as a novelist is too hard to sustain. Murakami credits his career longevity to the physical limits he pushes himself to through running. I found the book inspiring and a kick in the ass to push myself harder during my runs.

-After reading The Splendid and the Vile last month, I became an Erik Larson fan. This month I bought and read Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, and oh my gosh, it was so good. One of the things I love about Larson’s writing is the anecdotes he uses: a person’s frivolous yet telling quirks, the personal struggles of famous men and women, etc. Maybe the best of what he includes is the stuff he personally found most interesting. Like all good writing, his works center on the people, not just the events. On the why behind the what. This book also reads with such slow-building suspense that I had difficulty putting it down.

–Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was skeptical about reading this book, but I’m glad I did. It centers around this idea: be useful. Whatever you’re doing, be useful. If you don’t know what to do next, be useful. Your definition of being useful may be different than someone else’s, but that doesn’t matter. Be useful. Another message I got: you don’t have to always default to paying your dues. Sometimes you have to make a giant leap. (When he was just starting in movies, Arnold didn’t go for little parts here and there, he went for the starring role. In politics, he didn’t run for mayor or city council; he went straight for governorship.) Another message I liked: “Break the mirror”. Know the face of your neighbor better than your own. Focus your attention outward, on helping others. Inward focus is important too, of course, but the underlying reason to become personally successful (a reason I also firmly believe), is not so you can buy a larger house or take more vacations, but so you can do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. This is the best reason for wanting to succeed.

-I loved Haruki Murakami’s book on running and writing so much that I decided to read another book of his, this one on just the writing: Novelist as a Vocation. I loved it. LOVED it. He writes so candidly and honestly that reading him feels like you’re reading a letter from a friend. And it’s filled with wisdom about writing.

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