This Is The Most Important Thing For These Crazy Times

It’s the hardest thing.

Especially right now.

Not making money in this economy. Not climbing a mountain. Not running a marathon or writing a book or building a business. Not dealing with the high interest rates or the technological disruption.

No, right now and indeed for all time–the hardest thing in the world is to not be infected by what’s happening around you. To not lose your mind…or your decency…or your sense of what matters.

Look around. You see it everywhere. People melting down on airplanes and in traffic. Social media turning into a cesspool of rage and conspiracy theories. Families estranged. The news cycle ping-ponging between crisis and catastrophe. Real awful things happening.

I remember a couple of years ago, I interviewed Mike Duncan about his fascinating book The Storm Before the Storm and he was telling me about some Stoics who lived during the tumultuous years of 146–78 BC, a period that set the stage for the fall of Rome. Their attitude, he said, was this:

The winds may howl, but I will not be swept away.

That may well be one of the best definitions of Stoicism I have ever heard.

The world seems to be going crazy… and it’s trying to take you with it.

But here’s the thing: You can’t let it.

I’m reminded of Marcus Aurelius, who faced what might have been even darker times than our own: A devastating plague killing millions. A coup attempt by one of his most trusted generals. The empire literally crumbling at its edges. Yet, in his private writings, we see him constantly reminding himself: Don’t let it infect you. Don’t lose your humanity. Don’t go crazy with the craziness.

“No matter what anyone says or does,” he wrote, “my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, ‘No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.’”

Think of Montaigne, retreating to his study. Think of Stefan Zweig (whose biography of Montaigne I have been giving out since 2016) discovering Montaigne in a cellar as a refugee from Germany in 1941. Think of Cicero and Cato having to get out of Rome for a…