Imagine something for a second. Imagine you are 80 years old. Your skin’s a bit looser, you have whiter/thinner/no hair, your teeth are in a different room. If those things apply to you already I mean no disrespect — they’re all perfectly natural. But if you have to imagine, ask yourself these…
I enjoy watching animals doing nothing. Just as well really, they can be found doing nothing most of the time. If you live in the countryside, or travel there often, you might enjoy this too. It’s peaceful. Gazing into a green field at grazing sheep, I can focus on something…
The phrase “get away from it all” is so common that it warrants its own definition in Collins English Dictionary. The Collins website explains it as follows: “If you get away from it all, you have a holiday in a place that is very different from where you normally live…
“Mari, you have to go,” Keller says. “I admire what you’re trying to do, I admire the hell out of what you’re trying to do, but it’s not possible. You and a half dozen women cannot go up against the Sinaloa cartel!” “Because the people who are supposed to protect…
In his Consolation to Helvia, Seneca The Younger posits the following: “Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?” He goes on to say how unwise it is “to think that it is the amount of money and not the…
Recently I heard a song that I hadn’t listened to in years. I make the distinction between heard and listened because this time the song moved me in a way it never did before. It’s easy to listen to something without really processing it, it’s more difficult to hear it…
When Chinese author Zhang Wei paid £7,600 to drink the world’s most expensive dram of whisky, he said, “In a nutshell, it tasted good. I was drinking not so much the whisky but a lot of history.” 139 years of history to be exact. Or so he thought. It was…
I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. The first day, the first month, the year incrementing by one - none of these things have ever held any weight for me. I’ve always thought Epictetus’s forcefully direct question to be apt: “How long are you going to wait before you…
When the book A Million Little Pieces was published in 2003, it was a huge milestone of vindication for author James Frey. He had spent the previous twelve years in France trying to become a writer. He could now finally say he was one. But it wasn’t getting published that…
You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11 This Stoic reflection on the impermanence of life is known as Memento Mori, which is Latin for “remember you will die.” It’s a constant reminder not to take your time…