Several years ago I had a client who needed some legal work done. She was an educated and well-adjusted single mother of a young girl. She was normal in every way.
And then something terrible happened. Her daughter died suddenly from an unexpected illness. And this sent the mother on a downward psychological spiral from which she was unable to escape. The woman’s mother–a kindly but psychologically very strong woman in her 70s–was forced to care for her daughter, who went to pieces.
The classic book Kalila and Dimna
What themes does it deal with, and what lessons does it teach us?
Some books are so good that they become adopted by cultures outside their place of origin. Such a book is the collection of stories and fables that has found a home in India, Iran, the Arab world, and in Europe. The book is known by many names in all of these cultures, and various version of it exist, just as we find in Aesop’s Fables or the tales of the Thousand and One Nights.
It is known most commonly in India as the Panchatantra, in Iran as the Kalīleh o Demneh, and in the Arabic-speaking world as كليلة ودمنة (Kalila wa Dimna
Everyone wants to gain notoriety. Everyone wants to be respected.
But what are the various ways this can be achieved?
Every man starting out in life is concerned with gaining notoriety. He wishes to win a name for himself, and thereby gain the respect of others. We wish others to see us as we see ourselves; or perhaps we want to remake ourselves into something better than what we once were.
This is a podcast reading of my article of the same title that I published here today.
It describes how I overcame a collapsed lung, an operation, and a hospital recovery, and what kind of attitude you need to have when confronting disasters.
We all have to deal with difficult people. They may be co-workers, clients, friends, family members, or lovers. We can’t avoid contact with them.
And with our narcissistic world being what it is, more and more difficult people are injected into the course of life every day.
[To read the rest of the article, click here.]
I have a huge scar on my back. It’s 35 or 36 stitches, I think. I can’t remember the exact number. Let me tell you how I got it. It was my freshman year in college. And this was a long time ago, mind you. I’m talking 1986 here.
This is a podcast reading of an article that I published yesterday.
The tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has much to say about the virtue of justice, and why it is so rare.
This is a podcast reading of an article that I published last week here at Fortress of the Mind.
Recently I received a moving request to turn some of my articles into podcast readings. It came from one very kind German schoolteacher who found them useful for her classroom instruction in teaching English to pupils.
Quintus Curtius 
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