You'll Soon Forget Your Troubles

For time is like a river.

Hello, dear reader. First, thank-you, then I’ll get out of my own way- there are 135,567 of you now, all here for the same reason- you’d like to get better at the art of living well. That’s the whole point of life.

So let me tell you what I’ve been sitting on.

You probably already own the most famous book in Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations for an audience of one- himself. Reminders to steady his mind- his emotions, written at the edge of an empire, meant for his eyes alone. The most quoted Stoic text in history is, technically, a private diary.

I’ve been keeping a diary like that.

For the last year I’ve kept a running set of maxims- short, blunt lines I wrote to keep myself level. I practice medicine, which means my day is wall-to-wall human beings at their most frightened, their most stubborn, their most unreasonable, and the work is- least to say- bit chaotic. These lines are the railing I held onto. I’d have frankly gone under without them.

The plan was to keep them on t…