Going Alone

Whenever I strive, I always fall short. For the fact of striving makes me miss the mark. It would be better to become educated, without...

Before I was alive I'm pretty sure I simply did not exist. Oh sure, the stuff of which I am made was around, and the energy which courses...

I've always been one to notice the hole in the fabric of humanity, where one may press through a finger to the place outside. You can...

The Great Indifference exists wherever we are not distracted by ourselves. It is the substance of the universe that isn't—not empty...

There is so much to occupy the time of life. So much to do. So many people to know, and love, and pass the time together with. One thing...

For what reason is temperance a virtue? Why do the sages live in austerity, and the desert fathers forsake the world, and the poet love...

It is not easy to not watch someone else struggling with life. I am not referring to not seeing them struggle, but not watching them do...

Words are like clay in the hands of a potter, who might pound together a rough cup and offer it "here!" as an implement of utility. And...

In his book Walden, specifically in the chapter titled "The Ponds", Henry David Thoreau describes the seasons and moods of Walden Pond as...

Such a long hike to get here, now. The place where I set out from is invisible beyond those distant hills, a memory of setting out from a...

I keep forgetting - fooling myself, really - that I could be in any circumstance other than the one in which I find myself now. It's fun...

Our personal nature is our most visible evidence that our will is never fully free: as how many forces of my personal being - my...

I swam yesterday in the sea. I swam possibly too far yesterday in the sea, as I am today quite worn and spent. I expect that this is a...

Emotions are a curious thing to ride upon. They jump and jostle and jolt and then rest, before picking up again and tossing all about. As...

How much more decorous a possession than honest self-reflection; though there is nothing to see in such wealth besides the owner's...

I believe that Yumiko and I are as prepared for our new life together as we might hope to be. With our daughter leaving us this coming...

Yumiko and I watched a movie last night called Ad Aster, starring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones. We enjoyed the film, which is a science...

The arrival of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is an opportunity to exercise the Stoic virtue of Apathy in the face of what we cannot easily...

October 31, 2019 Dear Eric, It's a neat trick to neither lament nor attempt to remember the lives we did not live. For we all walk...

October 22, 2019 Dear Eric, Our talks back then were so full of optimism. Our youth spoke only of life, and of the optimistic promise of...