The Daily Stoic

We’re busy. We’re tired. We have so much to do. We had dreams once, sure, but they slowly deflated. The mortgage, the kids, the job, watching TV, that’s how we fill our days. It’s a slow downward spiral that Bruce Springsteen sang about in Racing in the Street: Some guys they just give up livingAnd start dying little by little, piece by pieceIf you’re not that guy, you at least know him or her. They’re a mainstay of the modern world. Overworked, undersexed, overtired, and underappreciated. Facebook is to blame right? The capitalist pigs are responsible, yeah? It’s because of the 24-hour news cycle.  Certainly none of those things help, but the truth is that this is a timeless problem. It goes back much further than Bruce or even this century. Because Seneca spoke about those guys too. “How much time has been lost to groundless anguish,” he writes, “greedy desire, the charms of society; how little is left to you from your own store of time.” Wake up, he says. Stop sleepwalking. Stop giving away what you can ne