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.
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.
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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.
It’s hard to predict when you’ll enjoy your most productive periods in life. For some people, their years of productivity come early, and then they just ride out the remainder of their lives based on early successes. Albert Einstein, to take an example, was one of those people. In fact, most major scientists seem to achieve their major breakthroughs before they reach the age of 50. After that, there seem to follow decades of “coasting” on past successes.
We’ve heard so, so much about the abundance mentality. So, so, much. It almost feels like a wearisome cliché at this point. Continue reading
You will hear many people try to tell you that “this can’t be done” or “that can’t be done.”
And many times such talk is proven wrong.
I saw the new film MacBeth (starring Michael Fassbender) at the Botafogo district of Rio de Janeiro a couple nights ago. I recommend it highly, as the production values are incredible and the pulse of the drama is intense. I don’t consider myself a big Shakespeare fan. I like a few of the major plays (Hamlet, MacBeth, etc.) but many of the others I find to be tedious.
I’m almost finished with Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography Einstein: His Life and Universe
It can’t be done.
It’s never been tried before.
It’s just impossible.
How many times in history have we heard those words? And how many times have those words turned out to be wrong?
Many times.
The author of one of the strangest and most impressive poetic works in history was born sometime around 99 or 95 B.C. The exact date is uncertain; but we are lucky to know even this morsel of information. Titus Lucretius Carus remains one of the most elusive poets of antiquity. He was an Epicurean, and this philosophy was not exactly congenial to the Roman character.
One gets the impression that there was a conspiracy of silence about him, that he may have been some grand embarrassment that needed to be hidden from view.
The centuries certainly conspired to bury his work, and he was almost completely forgotten in the Middle Ages; had the Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini not found him moldering on a monastery shelf, he might have been entirely obliterated from history.
Quintus Curtius 
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