Why Relationships Fade With Age, and How to Keep Them Close
You notice it slowly. The friend you once called about everything, you now text back a day late. The sibling you grew up beside, you love but somehow cannot get…
Make peace with what you cannot control.
You notice it slowly. The friend you once called about everything, you now text back a day late. The sibling you grew up beside, you love but somehow cannot get…
Amor fati and memento mori are two of the most quoted phrases in Stoicism. Amor fati means love your fate, the practice of embracing everything that happens to you…
Apatheia is the Stoic state of freedom from destructive emotions like rage, fear, and craving. It is not apathy or coldness. The Stoics did not aim to feel nothing…
This is a hard truth that many caring people struggle to accept. You cannot save everyone, no matter how badly you want to. And our attempts to rescue people often…
Epictetus never wrote anything down. His quotes survive only because a student recorded his lectures in the Discourses and the Enchiridion. The result is the…
Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher who lived from around 50 to 135 AD. Born into slavery, he was freed as a young man and went on to found his own school. He…
A collection of the most timeless Stoic quotes about life, from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and Zeno. The Stoics were not interested in abstract theory…
A collection of the most powerful Stoic quotes on adversity and hardship, from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The Stoics did not just endure difficulty…
A collection of the most powerful Stoic quotes on anxiety and worry, drawn from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. The Stoics understood anxiety as a story the…
A collection of the essential Stoic quotes on control, centered on Epictetus, who built his whole philosophy on one idea: some things are up to us and some are not…
A collection of the most striking Stoic quotes on death and mortality, from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. The Stoics kept death in clear view, not to be…
Stoic resilience is not gritting your teeth and pretending nothing hurts. It is building your sense of wellbeing on things no misfortune can reach, your own…
Stoicism and Buddhism arose worlds apart yet reached strikingly similar conclusions. Both trace suffering to our own craving and judgments, both teach that…
Stoicism and Christianity grew up in the same Roman world and share a surprising amount of moral ground, providence, inner virtue, human brotherhood, and acceptance…
The Stoics treated death not as a horror to flee but as a natural event to understand. They held that the fear of death comes from our judgments about it, not from…
Gratitude sits quietly at the heart of Stoicism. The philosophy keeps turning your attention from what you lack to what you already have, and from what fortune…
For the Stoics, happiness was not a feeling you chase but a life you build. They called it eudaimonia, a deep flourishing that comes from living with virtue and…
Stoicism does not tell you that money is evil or that you must be poor to be good. It treats wealth as an indifferent, something that cannot make you happy or…
Stoicism treats anger as a kind of temporary madness, a judgment you can catch and correct rather than a force you have to obey. The Stoics taught that the gap…
Stoicism treats failure as information, not identity. A failed attempt touches your circumstances, never your character, and circumstances were never fully in your…
Stoicism approaches grief not by numbing it but by changing how you hold it. The Stoics taught that nothing was ever truly ours to keep, only ours to borrow, and…
Stoicism and existentialism both ask how to live in a difficult, uncertain world, and both put your choices at the center. But they start from opposite views of the…
Amor fati is a Latin phrase that means love of fate. It is the practice of not just accepting whatever happens to you, including the hard and the unfair, but…
The dichotomy of control is the core Stoic idea that some things are up to you and some are not. Your choices, effort, words, and judgments are yours. Outcomes…
To stop overthinking the Stoic way, you separate the thought from the fact, judge only what is actually true, and act on the small part you control. Overthinking is…
Memento mori is a Latin phrase that means remember that you must die. It is the Stoic practice of keeping your own death in plain view, not to feel grim, but to cut…
Stoicism helps with anxiety by splitting what you can control from what you cannot, then spending your energy only on the first part. Most worry lives in the second…
When most people hear the word addiction, they think of the obvious culprits. Drugs, alcohol, maybe gambling. And they are not wrong. But there is a far more common…
Have you ever found yourself late at night with the crushing realization that you are mediocre? Not special or extraordinary in any meaningful way? Whether you’re…
There is a quiet myth most of us absorbed without noticing. It says that once you choose a path, once you pick the degree, start the career, get known for a thing…
You know the feeling, even if you have never named it. That constant, low hum of needing to be someone else. Someone better, someone more polished, someone more…
A few years ago, I lost my dad. He was 55. It was, obviously, a major loss. One day he was here, laughing, arguing, living. The next he was gone. Just like that…
Last week, I discovered something terrifying about myself. I decided to track my actual screen time – not just my phone, but every single digital interface in my…
In Omaha, Nebraska, there’s a modest gray house worth about $1.4 million. Nothing special about it, except that it’s owned by Warren Buffett, one of the richest…
Life often seems like a well-organized jigsaw puzzle where every piece fits perfectly together, creating a clear and complete picture. But sometimes, just one…
Discovering a higher power doesn’t always require spiritual texts or divine revelations; sometimes, it’s the extraordinary lives of others that illuminate the path…
Sometimes, we look at others and feel bad if we can’t do what they do. Life in the wild is a vast canvas of variety, with every creature equipped to tackle its…
You wake up, eat your breakfast, and get ready for work or school. You listen to your favorite tunes during the day, and maybe you hit the gym or go for a jog. When…
Imagine yourself standing on the edge of a precipice, holding onto a heavy boulder that symbolizes your expectations, your desired outcomes. With each passing…
Make sure you get it right - The requirements and foundation of a true friendship. It is said that we are the average of five people we hang out with most. Would…
Sometimes you’ve got to be honest with yourself. Considering these questions are self-explanatory, I think I should not waste your time explaining them. Here are…
Well, the majority of you. You may think that you are just reading or writing an article. Maybe you think that you’re just playing an instrument out of your own…
Everything is possible. Anything can happen, even to the people and things you love. We may be shocked or devastated by those events when they occur. But why is…
We love ourselves more than we love others, but we care more about others’ opinions than of our own. What happens when you think of doing something new, something…
Our life is ephemeral because death is inevitable. It surprisingly can come anytime, anywhere. Maybe there is someone out there who would rob or kill you for a…
Modern friendship is amazing. You meet new people through social media, and your social media following keeps growing. Despite being in touch with more people than…
We got a wide variety of wants , from being loved by all to being physically attractive to having romance and status. We want to save money but visit exotic places…
To err is human. Right? The problem is when we choose to stay wrong and be blind to our errors. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. We are all constantly…
Whatever goodness and evil there is, it is all in our heads. There were things that people centuries ago used to do, but they never viewed them as suffering. Unlike…
We sometimes let society dictate what “good,” “the best,” and “wealth” means , what we are supposed to do and what we are supposed to own to be considered…
There are wrongdoers everywhere, from egomaniacs and liars to haters. These people don’t understand the meaning of good and evil. You see them on the road, in…
The soda ads show happy people for a reason. We’re all drawn to happy people, or at least those who seem happy. We are all in pursuit of happiness, but happiness is…
We all like to think that we are good people , have a noble life purpose, and do what we say. But, do we? We often say the right things but do the wrong things. We…
We, humans, love making plans. We make plans all day, where to go, where to eat, when to work, and bazillion other things. But on the flip side, it gets super…
There are many things at play in this universe, and we cannot see them all. The troubles you had, the failures you saw, the misfortunes we experienced were all a…
Some scientists once believed atoms were the smallest particle before sub-atomic particles got discovered. Many thought that Disney and Marvel’s movies were real…
There is a job you are terrified of losing, so you cannot enjoy having it. A relationship you grip so tightly that the fear of it ending poisons the time you…
How often do you say something stupid that you regret later? How often have you said something like, “God, Why’d I say that?” or “How stupid am I to handle it like…
You can control and have full authority whether you want to eat a pizza or not. But, can you control your friends? All you can do is influence them in their…
Addictions can have different forms, and we must give up on the destructive habits that we once considered good , like constantly checking emails, having coffee…
What do you do if you go to someplace you’ve never been before? You check out the maps and plan out the route, right? You want to see the endpoint and be in more…
One of the fundamental parts of stoic philosophy is to see the event instead of attaching ourselves to it, to see it without any labels or expectations. It’s all…
We all have plenty of things to manage in our day-to-day lives, and we want to be on top of all of them - to be successful, have great relationships, and everything…
A few years ago, you had things planned for yourself, and you might already have achieved those things. Some people would love to have what you have right now and…
We, humans, grip so tightly to life, sometimes harder than we should, and that attachment is the root of all fear of death. Yet, even when we practice…
We are all unaware; unaware of when and how we’ll die, and this is the uncertainty we are afraid of. We have labeled these emotions about death as painful, and…
Have you ever made a decision that looked great on paper and felt wrong in your gut, and only later realized it was never what you wanted at all? It was what your…
Time and again, we have heard this phrase that age is just a number. For some, aging is less dramatic than others. While some age-related changes can be benign, the…
Our life is just a mere drop in the ocean of time, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. All that we know is history or will be history one day. Empires fall…
You’re sad only when you lose something valuable. You’re scared, only when the danger is present. You’re in guilt only when you know you did something wrong…
Life is often compared to a game, filled with endless turns and spins, challenges, and victories. A particular metaphor rings profoundly true – that of likening…
We own nothing when we are born, and we own nothing when we leave. We borrowed it from our forefathers, and when our time comes, we return and leave them for the…
Here is a fact we all know and almost none of us live by: you are dying, slowly, right now, and so is everyone you love. Death is the one prophecy that never fails…
Here is an uncomfortable but clarifying exercise the Stoics practiced on purpose: live today as if it were your last. Not in a reckless, burn it all down way, but…
Humans operate at two levels - rationally or animalistically. Our logical reason is relatively newer than our animalistic nature, but our rational, sound mind can…
There are situations in life where we feel everything is lost, and there’s no moving forward. So we start complaining more and dive deep into self-pity. During…
You are partially to blame when others are at fault, and you’re not there to correct them and help them. It’d be better if you don’t look for weakness in others and…
An undisciplined person can be distracted and riled up by any little thing, be it from social media or by an acquaintance. But a strong person doesn’t react to…
We spend hours on Instagram and other social media comparing our lives to others behind the scenes. That’s where our insecurity kicks in—by comparing to their every…
The new thing arrives and for about a week it is magic. The car, the watch, the bag, the upgrade you saved for or splurged on. Then, quietly, it becomes normal. The…
When you have people you love in your life, then care about them now because people are not replaceable . It’s all the more reason to show love and care now because…
Your attachment is when you feel an emotional bond between you and some person or a thing, which makes you feel more secure in their presence. It’s great to feel…
We tend to devalue anything that will not last. The perfect evening feels a little sad because it will end. The good moment gets shadowed by the knowledge that it…
History repeats itself. Now, instead of being scared of it, this fact can also give you a calming, centering effect and allow you to focus, learn necessary lessons…
Everything around us exists in a very delicate balance of a complex network of interactions between us and our environment. When one creature dies, it gives life to…
Stoicism has a few critical habits that we should align our minds and thoughts with - Deep down, we all know the truth. The first stoic habit is to accept it…
We’re all learning, and hopefully, we are all growing, but that doesn’t give us the right to judge anyone else. We can control only our faults, and others will…
People say hope is more powerful than fear and that hope is good, and fear is bad. But to a stoic, they are both the same. Both of them are the enemies of this…
Nothing around you is standing still, even the things that look permanent. Your body is quietly rebuilding itself, your city is shifting, your relationships are…
You made a choice you felt good about, and now you are lying awake rehearsing the speech. The one where you finally explain yourself so they understand. Maybe it is…
President Truman kept a sign on his desk that read the buck stops here. It meant there was no one above him to pass the blame to, that the responsibility ended at…
Two people lose the same job on the same day. A year later, one is bitter, stuck, still telling the story of how they were wronged. The other has started something…
We’re like the people who came before us who also thought “things are different this time” and that “we are different.” They were wrong, and so are we. It has…
The world and we are constantly changing. All things must pass, new replaces the old, and nothing is exempt from this change. You’re not what you always have been…
So much of your life was cast before you ever got a say. You did not choose the century, the country, the family, the body, or the circumstances you were born into…
It sounds like a contradiction, but your life gets bigger when you want less. Every want you carry is a small tether, a thing to chase, protect, or worry about, and…
Everything you have can change in a single moment. A diagnosis, an accident, a phone call, and the life you thought was stable rearranges itself in an instant…
If we all have plans to reach A from B, then there’s no need to take a different path, and we can all learn from our peers and take the same course. Remember that…
Accept nature’s order just like you’d accept a doctor’s order and accept any bitter medicine a doctor prescribes. Accept nature’s way of healing you. Nature is the…
Things went bad? Well, we can’t change the past, so better to change our opinion of it. Accept whatever happened and enjoy everything that happens to you now. There…
Somewhere along the way, our wants quietly promoted themselves to needs. The bigger house became a need. The upgrade, the newest thing, the lifestyle became needs…
You know the feeling. It is Sunday afternoon, you finally have a few free hours, and instead of enjoying them you feel a low hum of guilt. You should be answering…
You post something you are proud of. A project, an opinion, a photo, a small win. Within an hour someone you have never met has left a comment designed to make you…
There is an old story that captures this whole idea better than any argument could. Alexander the Great, the most powerful man in the world, went to visit Diogenes…
We measure wealth by how much someone has. The Stoics measured it by how little someone needs. By their math, the richest person in the room is not the one with the…
We treat failure like a catastrophe to be avoided at all costs, and in doing so we avoid the very thing that teaches us fastest. Ships get wrecked. Plans fall…
Two people can go through the exact same disaster and come out completely differently. One is broken by it, still bitter years later. The other somehow turns it…
We keep filing the good life under “later” and “elsewhere.” Once the vacation comes. Once we move to the new city. Once the relationship gets fixed on some future…
You do good work and the recognition does not come. The promotion goes to someone else, the credit lands on the wrong desk, the effort you poured in goes unnoticed…
Life will keep handing you things that run directly against your plans. The setback you did not see coming, the door that slams shut, the situation that refuses to…
At some point you catch yourself thinking it was not supposed to be this hard. The job was meant to be further along. The relationship was meant to be easier. The…
Something in your life is about to go wrong. Not as a threat, just as a fact. Plans fail, things break, people leave, the unexpected arrives without knocking. You…
You prepare for weeks. You walk into the interview sharp, you answer well, you leave knowing you did your part. Then the email comes: they went with someone else…
