Greetings Readers!
Here is the next volume of our series — Letters to a Young Seeker (Catch up on previous volumes: Don’t Forget to Live, Break Bread with the Dead, Live an Examined Life, Carry the Fire, The Art of Optimism, Think Like a Mortal, Trust Thyself, and The Art of Being).
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Dear Fellow Traveler,
Do you ever have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? If so, you’re in good company; so did the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. In his Meditations (or notes to himself), he wrote, “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being.”
Because we have freedom—we also have responsibility. Many of the questions we ponder only arise because we are free. As the existentialist Jean-Paul Sarte put it, “We are condemned to be free.”
Marcus Aurelius wrestled with several questions,
“At dawn when you’re reluctant to get up, have this thought readily available. I have work to do as a human being, and that’s why I’m getting up. Do I still resent it if I’m on my way to do the work for which I was born and for the sake of which I was brought into the world? Or is this what I was made for, to lie in bed and keep myself warm?”
