Dear Fellow Traveler,
“Two words should be committed to memory and obeyed by alternately exerting and restraining ourselves,” stressed the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “words that will ensure we lead a mainly blameless and untroubled life. Those two words are “persist and resist.”
We often ask, “What does it mean to live a good life?” But interestingly, once we find an answer, the real work of self-control begins—the work of persisting and resisting. Only when we have a desired direction can we notice if we have veered off course.
At the start of our Perennial Habits course, we were asked, “What do you think is the driving aim of your life?” Answers to these perennial questions create the challenge of living them out and resisting distractions, desires, and so on.
