"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one." –Marcus Aurelius
I’d like to share some thoughts on the relationship a man has with rules throughout his life. How do we first encounter rules? What is the difference between a rule and a principal? What is the mark of a mature man in this context? Children start out without any rules or sense of boundaries, possibly…
When I was a kid self-esteem began to be promoted in schools. A lot of adults seemed to have a problem with it, but almost nothing is more conformist to the next idea than education. It’s a part of teachers’ identity to always be doing the next thing. So it stuck. At the time, I…
I have no children, and my wife isn’t even pregnant yet. But we will start trying in 2020. And it’s interesting how this theoretical fatherhood is already having a big effect on my life. I don’t mean in terms of shopping for baby clothes. I mean in terms of my own identity and concerns. It’s…
Apologizing is an important life skill. Done properly it can repair and strengthen your relationships by building trust. But it’s hard to get right. Most people can smell an insincere apology a mile off. At best an insincere apology will look like you are going through the motions but don’t really understand why what you…
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself. – Honore de Balzac The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful…
Pacifism is the idea that violence is inherently wrong. Sometimes it is also expressed as the idea that ‘violence doesn’t solve anything’ or that violence creates more violence. This is sort of a perversion of the old ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ wisdom. This is expressed individually by being afraid of conflict,…
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” – Mignon McLaughlin “You want to set a goal that is big enough that in the process of achieving it you become someone worth becoming.” – Jim Rohn In previous times, divorce was unthinkable. While recognizing that this was probably too…
The search for authenticity has become a fad in the last generation. It’s applied both internally and externally – we look for ‘authentic’ things or experiences in the world, and we try to be ‘authentic’ ourselves. It may be a reaction to the superficiality of consumerism. But it is subject to a sort of uncertainty…
“If unwilling to rise in the morning, say to thyself, ‘I awake to do the work of a man.’” –Marcus Aurelius In recent years we’ve heard people constantly giving the advice to ‘follow your passion’ or asking us ‘what are you passionate about?’ More broadly, we have developed a cultural assumption that it is better…
The Internet gives everyone the ability to talk to everyone else, all the time. But it’s not like other kinds of speaking in at least two important ways from the point of view of how we say it and how we are received. One is that it is often anonymous and the speaker is isolated…