Ast ego curarum vobis arcana mearum
Expromam mentisque meae quo pondera vergant.
“But I will reveal to you my secrets, and the weighty matters that oppress my mind.”
–Lucan, Pharsalia VIII.278.
My fourth book, Pathways, will be released within the next ten to fourteen days. It is a collection of the very best short essays of 2015.
There are 56 essays in all, all of which have been edited, polished, and refurbished, together with an easy-to-locate organizing system.
Sometimes the time is not right for your message to be heard. Sometimes being great is not enough. The right stars must come into alignment. External conditions must be right for your message to be heard. People may like you, but the real recognition may not yet be forthcoming.
History is replete with figures who went not just through slumps, but years of practical exile or relegation to obscurity. But eventually, talent and quality will tell. The key is to endure the hardship of the Wilderness Years.
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.
What are social boundaries?
Why are they important?
And how do we go about setting them, and reinforcing them, with other people?
Holidays can be rough times for family dynamics. Old tensions and antagonisms can simmer and bubble to the surface. When they do, we need to have a dialogue with ourselves.
This podcast can be part of that dialogue.
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.
How can I stop procrastinating and regain control of my life?
How can I maintain my focus and motivation for the things I’m doing?
Quintus Curtius 
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