From Strength to Strength

They should endeavor, too, by means of their counsel and practical wisdom to be of as much service as possible to their friends and to the young, and above all to the state.

Many in the last few years have taken a keen interest in the works of Epicurus, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. And not for intellectual reasons—they find secrets to the meaning of their lives therein, and it brings them happiness.

wanting spiritual depth is not a weakness, it is a new source of strength—strength needed to jump to the crystallized intelligence curve.

exigencies

An intimate friendship, whether it be from the companionate love of your spouse or an Aristotelian “perfect friend,” is better than any professional success. It will salve the wounds of professional decline like nothing else.

Noble Truth 1. Life is suffering (dukkha in Sanskrit), due to chronic dissatisfaction. Noble Truth 2. The cause of this suffering is craving, desire, and attachment for worldly things. Noble Truth 3. Suffering can be defeated by eliminating this craving, desire, and attachment. Noble Truth 4. The way to eliminate craving, desire, and attachment is

Personally, I have gone in the other direction instead by compiling a “reverse bucket list” to make the ideas in this chapter practical and workable in my life. Each year on my birthday, I list my worldly wants and attachments—the stuff that fits under Thomas’s categories of money, power, pleasure, and honor. I try to be completely honest. I don’t

“Kid, there’s only one mistake you can make during a falling tide,” he said. “What’s that?” I asked. “Not having your line in the water.” I have remembered that day many times while writing this book. There is a falling tide to life, the transition from fluid to crystallized intelligence. This is an intensely productive and fertile period. It is wh

his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”[24]

“Is this work deeply interesting to me?” is a helpful litmus test of whether a new activity is your new marshmallow.