Tag Archives: Philosophy of Life

PROMPT: Stress

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How do you manage stress?

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Through the realization that one packs one’s own load.

Everything is passing weather, how one dials up (or down) the significance of the present situation is up to one (even if the situation, itself, is completely out of one’s hands.) As the Stoics said, either you can or can’t do something about a given event — either way, it’s not worth one’s worry. If you can’t do anything about it, worry is futile. If you can, do the virtuous thing and you can feel content even if it doesn’t seem to work out for you.

PROMPT: Good Person

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What does it mean to be a good person?

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I don’t know that it has a meaning. I tend to consider dualities in Taoist terms. Every Yang has a seed of Yin; the Yang flows into Yin and back again.

PROMPT: Know

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What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?

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I believe the distinction between knowledge and wisdom is that one merely needs to be able to understand knowledge, but one must be able to live wisdom. For example, one can teach a five-year-old Jesus’ lesson about turning the other cheek, and they may understand every word but still be struggling to live it sixty years later.

My point is that I’m doubtful that knowing anything would have saved me pain because I would have had to live it, and that takes time, experience, and struggle.

PROMPT: While Traveling

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What’s the best way to meet new people while traveling?

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Don’t travel in a big tour group or cruise. As a single or a couple, one can’t help but interact with locals. Stay where nationals of that country stay; eat where they eat.

PROMPT: Mantra or Philosophy

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What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?

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First, I don’t have a mantra. While I believe Transcendental Meditation to be a fine approach, other meditative techniques have resonated with me more on a personal level. Unless by “mantra” one is looking for a soundbite that encapsulates the entirety of one’s philosophical thinking — which I also do not have. (At least not a stable one.) Philosophically, I am a Traveler (or, identically – I would argue, a Student.) Epistemologically, this requires a humility about what can and can’t know (though, admittedly, not necessarily humility — generally speaking,) a willingness to empty one’s cup to allow for consideration of new information, and an openness to adopting foreign and unfamiliar ideas where they prove useful.

PROMPT: Genie

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The genie grants you a wish. What is it?

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Oh no, I read the myth of Midas, I’m not falling for that one.

FIVE WISE LINES [September 2026]

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Luck, diligence, spontaneity, and inspiration
are all needed to write a poem.

Mary oliver; A Poetry Handbook

…above all let us never accept as cause for what we do not comprehend something we comprehend even less.

Marquis de sade; Juliette

…wise people don’t tell us what to do;
they start by witnessing our story.

david brooks; How to know a person

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but to those who can see it coming and jump aside. Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh.

Hunter s. thompson; The Rum Diary

We do not see things as they are,
we see them as we are.

Anaïs Nin

PROMPT: Life Hacks

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What are some life hacks that you practice?

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As far as I’ve seen of so-called “life hacks” they seem to mostly be inelegant solutions for problems that either: a.) already have more reliable and tested solutions, or b.) are needlessly complicated / exaggerated to suggest they need a solution when they really don’t. The whole “life hack” industry seems to be people sitting around trying to figure out how to go viral by creating the illusion of cleverness. It is not Wú Wéi.

PROMPT: Karma

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Do you believe in karma?

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As a general principle about how acting selflessly and as a force for good tends to help one find one’s way, YES. As a clockwork cause-and-effect accounting of one’s life activities, NO. In fact, in the latter sense, I believe the idea has quite a dark side that is frequently overlooked.

PROMPT: Like Home

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Daily writing prompt
What’s a place you visited that felt like home?
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My bar for a place to feel like home is that I don’t have to think every time about where I will eat or do my laundry. So, I’ve had this a number of times in a number of countries in which I had access to a kitchen(ette) and a washing machine.