STOIC POETRY | Nailing a job interview
Responding to a viewer who asked me to make a video sharing tips for succeeding at a job interview.
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Kurt Bell
- Sep 18, 2020
- 1 min
STOIC POETRY | MULLY kissed me
Recalling a time with another community and another way of life.
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Kurt Bell
- Sep 18, 2020
- 1 min
STOIC POETRY | Yelling at a deaf and mute girl
Reflecting on how I might use Stoic principles to handle a challenging moment.
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Kurt Bell
- Sep 18, 2020
- 1 min
STOIC POETRY | Live with Emily
An impromptu vlog with my daughter, Emily. We were out for a day long motorcycle ride running errands and visiting family...
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Kurt Bell
- Sep 18, 2020
- 1 min
STOIC POETRY | Why I gave up Japan
I began this live stream to discuss the reason I seemingly abandoned my connection to my friends in Japan from the JVLOG community.
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Kurt Bell
- Sep 18, 2020
- 1 min
STOIC POETRY | Emily asked me to make this video
My grown daughter asked me to make this video in order to share a little about what’s happening in our lives and to perhaps kick off...
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 29, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | Sand or coal?
The opportunity to stay or to go. I say always go. Especially when we are young—always go. For the wonder of what we have left behind is like a dull lump of coal possessed against a moment's need of warmth should life turn cold and dark and possibly alone. We remain behind to not give up the little we already have, in turn for the guarantee of nothing should we leave; a bargain hardly equitable to a reasonable mind. So, I'll stay. And I will settle in. And I will remain with
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 28, 2020
- 6 min
STOIC POETRY | The beginning of Going Alone
I remember when I first thought up the idea of Going Alone. My family and I were living then in Japan, and I was making YouTube videos for the Walking in Japan and Abandoned Japan series. I was active at that time on social media, and among the questions I answered from viewers were periodic requests from people who planned to visit Japan, and who asked if they could join me on an adventure in the mountains. Such arrangements only rarely worked out, as the logistics of visiti
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 25, 2020
- 3 min
STOIC POETRY | Sailing the inner sea
There is a sea within us upon which circumstance presses restless winds night and day; forming crests and troughs, moving over the face of the waters in scale relative to whatever may be happening around us, and to us, and to those whom we know and love and the things we possess and care for and call our own. In mild times the waters are still or rising just slightly with a gentle breeze blowing in the direction of mild climes. Sometimes though, a wind picks up as our life se
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 24, 2020
- 1 min
STOIC POETRY | Infrastructure
There is an inward architecture which we create through the fact and consequence of our decisions and actions, which become the scaffolding structure of the inner man or woman who others may dimly see when they look us square in the eyes; perceiving a light or darkness within which shines or empties in proportion to the effort we have made to not just live, but to live well, and in accord with our perceived nature and better inclination. We fail utterly when we build our inne
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 22, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | Reading good books
I once rose late each day to meander life in search of tidbits to consume: news, gossip, politics, and the shared things of the appetites of people I mostly never knew—friends, and those I follow, and others whom I merely liked what they had to say. My consumption then was a gross intake of whatever could fill the time, or stuff my attention until necessity took me aside for work, or a meal, or sleep. Such a wasteful use of time: days and weeks and months and years of life ut
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 20, 2020
- 1 min
STOIC POETRY | The news which is never old
I awoke today to headlines of war, and gossip, and scandal, and the rise of stocks and advertisements for soap, and a 30% chance of rain in the afternoon. I read these things over my breakfast, and thus did ready myself for a day of trivia, and minutia, and the heat and entropy of life spent over small things of no real consequence—another wasted day of distraction spent clamoring over the news. I must devote myself only
To the news which is never old But perhaps one day I mi
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 19, 2020
- 3 min
STOIC POETRY | Some ways in which we are alive
The price of admittance into the venue and arena of life is the effort and labor of our parents in conceiving, bearing, and bringing us into the world, as well as their work then to successfully raise us into functioning citizens of whatever society claims us its own. Our days may then be passed like a templated script: getting educated, finding friends and work, and making a home and a way and children of our own. And by such means, every day of our life may be passed, exper
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 17, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | What there isn't beyond the sea
Life is a little like coming awake on an island beach, naked and screaming and vulnerable and weak. The natives here do care for us, and get us up off the sand to shelter and shade from the sun and night and the grinding machine outside. They teach us their tongue, and give us some ways, and show us how to be and behave and what to expect. And the natives explain why we are here while expecting belief. And so we grow seemingly strong and fluent and capable; and establish our
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 15, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | The upward ground
"...and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward!"
-Henry David Thoreau I accept life as hard. I accept the need to rise early. I accept my difficult work. I accept circumstance which are hard for the fact of change. And I accept my things must break, and that I am broken, too— And though I wish none of these for their own sake, and I desire no such life for another, I accept this way to go, and these facts of being—and maybe much worse—
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 14, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | The bullseye aim
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 seeking an education. Or make a living without the need of a job. Or enjoy friendship, without counting friends. Or adventure even, without packing or leaving home or even remaining at home— But this isn't practical at all, and no way to live and find a mate, and raise children, and make a home or live a life. Every ambition,
A near miss—
Eve
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 13, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | The season of philosophy
As a young man, my ideas resembled the ideas of others, and my writing was an imperfect transcription of what I'd learned. My time then was better spent putting these ideas into practice; like an athlete rehearsing the instruction of their coach, making the teaching their own through the training of body and mind in order to gain the necessary strength, resilience, tone, and muscle memory to engage the world with wise instinct—the lesson of the teacher having then become the
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 12, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | The fact that we went—alone
I began my life as a young adult finding things along the way. I went out from the circumstance I knew into life which was not yet mine, and made it mine. As so, I explored for some years along distant roads and over mountains and even under the sea. There are seeds to find
Out there,
Where life is strange
Find them,
For a lifetime of bounty And those places where I went did not become my own, though I remember them like photos I did never take. It was instead the going to su
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 11, 2020
- 3 min
STOIC POETRY | When our finding days are done
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 through me was somewhere here—but, I wasn't. The thing which is me did not exist. The composite collection of atoms and energy which thus assembled and was given my name was never anywhere together before my conception and what was the start of a long chain of chemical reactions leading to now; a series of cellular additions—the lives and d
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Kurt Bell
- Aug 7, 2020
- 2 min
STOIC POETRY | The hole along the way
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 peek through such a hole...though there is nothing to see due to the brilliant ambient backlight of where we now are, and the rush of smoke-like familiar air which flows out past us through the hole into the apparent void—smoke-like, for the congestion of countless generations breathing at once and through time, the stale air of expired speech
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