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The Stoics saw gratitude as a kind of medicine, that saying “Thank you” for every experience was the key to mental health. “Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,” was how Marcus Aurelius put it, “that things are good and always will be.” And they didn’t just mean this on special days like Thanksgiving […]

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There is a scene in Cormac McCarthy’s dark and beautiful novel All the Pretty Horses, where Emilio Perez asks John Grady a question that we would do well to think about in our own difficult circumstances. “The world wants to know if you have cojones. If you are brave?” This is something the Stoics might have expressed in […]

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It was 154 years ago yesterday that Abraham Lincoln ascended a small stage at the newly created cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and gave a short address of some 272 words. The address was short and the shortness and quietness of it seemed to so catch the audience off guard that we don’t even have a uniform […]

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The General Fox Connor would tell his young protege Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Always take your job seriously, never yourself.” It’s a paradoxical truth: The responsibilities thrust upon you are important and your duty to those you lead or serve is everything, yet where these roles take you—be it to power or wealth or fame—says nothing […]

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You hear that a friend—or rather not really a friend—has said something behind your back. Worse, maybe they not only said it behind your back but in front of a lot of other people. What can you do? Perhaps you greedily suck this information up through your sources—What did they say? Really? In those words?—and watch as […]

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Turn on any daytime ESPN or FS1 show and you’ll likely find a collection of former athletes, anchors and writers discussing inane questions like: “Are We Ok with __________ Doing _______?” Or “What Do You Think of ________’s Upsetting Comments?” “Should _______ Be Fined For _______?” Or some other such nonsense. It’s not always like […]

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What do Oscar Wilde, Susan Sontag, Marcus Aurelius, John Quincy Adams, Anne Frank, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, Joan Didion all have in common? It’s simple. They journaled. Often, if not every day. Some did it in the morning. Some did it at night. Some captured moments of triumph, and others moments of […]

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Sports Illustrated has a beautiful and moving obituary for Roy Halladay, one of the greatest pitchers ever, who died unexpectedly in a plane crash in early November. A few of the passages are worth highlighting here, if only because his tragic death is a reminder of the fragility of life. “For me the satisfaction is always the competition, […]

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As a young businessman, John D. Rockefeller was all sorts of contradictions. First, he was pious and religious…yet also incredibly ambitious. He lusted for money and power…yet he also practiced intense self-discipline and self-control. He knew how smart and talented he was…yet he worked to be humble and not let his success go to his […]

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