As a student, I was a note-taking machine. My hand moved with lightning speed, capturing every word my teacher uttered. But to my surprise, I discovered that I often stood alone in my enthusiasm.

While some classmates absorbed information through visual cues, others relied on active listening or hands-on experiences. But for me, writing unlocked the door to understanding.

Our apartment door leads onto the charming streets of Oltrarno, a Florentine borgo dating back to the 13th century. The neighborhood is young compared to other parts of the Renaissance city. The northern bank of the Arno, across the river, has a much longer history, having been founded as a Roman military outpost in the first century B.C. 

Amid such ancient wonders, feeling old is impossible.

Since its inception, prohibition proved to be a catastrophic endeavor, exerting negligible influence on the drinking habits of Americans (if not worsening matters). Moreover, it compromised the meaning of "temperance," a term whose original meaning warrants rediscovery.

Within Stoic philosophy (my favorite), temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues, alongside wisdom, courage, and justice.

Why do some problems seem to defy the human ability to solve them? Are they truly unsolvable? Is the complexity beyond our comprehension? Do we lack the resources, human or otherwise? Or are we solving problems but lack the capacity to recognize it? Daniel Gilbert's research on Prevalence-Induced Concept Change helps explain how progress is often masked.

In America, a recurring tendency manifests itself whereby emphasis is placed on external antagonists - adversarial nations, menacing terrorist groups, or perilous biological hazards. However, the astute observer, like Lincoln, discerns that the true menace has always and will always come from within the nation itself.

Hofstadter describes the development of Bach's preludes and fugues like a music teacher, explaining how Bach worked up various themes and notions and then did some fancy finagling to produce wild, crazy, and wonderful music.

As Hofstadter dove deeper into the human mind and its relationship to music, sparks of something darker started igniting in my neurons. I found myself mulling how our limitation for stacking information is exploited to foster a society rife with confusion, division, and anger.

The complex struggle between tradition and innovation is nothing new. In 1600, a renowned musical theorist named Giovanni Artusi published a dialogue wherein he criticized inventive music being produced by contemporary artists. The debate that ensued serves as a reminder that change is an unavoidable aspect of life. It's essential to recognize the significance of both tradition and innovation.

I'm 36,000 feet in the air and moving at 542 miles per hour over Labrador, Canada. The immense power of human ingenuity propels me. Beside me, my daughter sits, desperately struggling against the pull of slumber - no doubt confused by the flurry of activity over the last several days. My wife, on the other side of her, watches closely - reassuring her when turbulent air bounces our tube around in the sky. 

We're flying.

In 2010 Stephen Hawking declared philosophy dead. Our education system teaches maths and sciences but little philosophy and ethics. Philosophy is a love of wisdom and a thirst for knowledge. Philosophy seeks to answer those questions for which a methodology has yet to be developed. But the main reason philosophy matters has little to do with metaphysics or great questions of existence; it has to do with living a well-lived life.

Western philosophy has been domineered by academics who have departmentalized and institutionalized the art of living well. In academia, philosophy departments imitate natural sciences like physics and biology, yet "professional" philosophers are no closer to being experts on goodness than the ancients were — or, as Jacob Needleman put it, "questions of the heart, that are the very substance of human life are often reduced to puzzles of the intellect."

There are 2,668 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes. Their vast wealth allows them to do almost anything they want - but none of them can stop that grumpy bastard, Father Time.

Would you rather be given $1,000 today or in two years? You, along with the billionaires, will presumably answer today. That's because of the time value of money. And yet when it comes to time, we value the present less than the future and the past.

Everything in nature knows how to be itself. Leopards, for example, "from birth know they are keepers of solitude." But we, humans, are influenced by cultural stories, which cause us to rationalize away the experiences that would be most fulfilling. Boyd reminds us that we are not witness to nature but part of it. Inside each of us, behind all the social conditioning, is the "wild self.”

Humanity hung in a delicate balance, and one American wielded the unfathomable power and authority to tip the scales toward nuclear war or tiptoe to the continued fragile peace. Imagine the noise that President Kennedy must've heard and the pressure he must've felt while trying to make the most critical decision of his life - how to respond to the Soviet missile presence in Cuba.

"Is there anything I can do to make you sound better?" My favorite jazz drummer, Art Blakey (also known as Bu), asked every musician he readied to play with that simple question. Adopting it and asking it across life's domains will undoubtedly lead to better experiences, as it led to better music for Blakey and his bandmates.

Some people possess superpowers. It's as if they can alter time and accomplish more than us normies. Or they can move at warp speed, performing tasks in a fraction of the time it takes the rest of us. 

Theodore Roosevelt was one of these people. He became America's youngest president at 42, having amassed a resume that included police commissioner of New York City and assistant secretary of the Navy. That's enough for one lifetime, but Teddy also published over 40 books, pursued numerous hobbies, and was a well-respected naturalist.

 How?

I‘m not a New Year’s resolutioner. 

Most resolutions quickly go down in flames (only 9% of people say they complete theirs). Thus, I view self-improvement as a mode of existence with no distinct beginning or end— a way of life cultivated and built upon over time. A long time.

Taking the long perspective allows habit formation without arbitrary goals, end dates, and start dates. It also promotes a life in which marginal gains can compound over time. For me, this is the way. 

A shroud of mystery surrounds history's famous geniuses like Einstein, Newton, Tesla, and Faraday. For laypeople, it's easy to deify these great thinkers and presume they possess supernatural gifts that make them omniscient. These brainiacs possess supreme confidence; we think - fully assured in their calculations, hypothesis, and theories. But counter-intuitively, genius hesitates.

In his annotated translation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Robin Waterfield equates Marcus' use of the ancient word hegemonikon to the mind's "command center."

The command center is the hub of the command and control (C2) function. The military definition of C2 is "the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of a mission. Commanders perform command and control functions through a command and control system."

Weave problems are challenging because there is no single causality. But being a science-based society, we're determined to point the finger at one variable. To do so, we employ the scientific method, isolating one variable after another and measuring the results. But weave problems are too complex. They can contain thousands of interrelated, overlapping, and co-occurring components that have varying and intermittent impacts on tough-to-measure outcomes. We have to think differently.

A proper southern drawl that pours like molasses is a beautiful thing. Listening to White Oak Pastures owner Will Harris talk about his "aycus of layund" is delightful, but the real treat is in the experiential wisdom he shares - knowledge gained only from raising animals in a way that mimics the cycles of nature and deeply contemplating our food system.

Resiliency is the ability to overcome difficulties, and efficiency is the ability to achieve an end with zero waste. It's easy to imagine how the two could be at odds in any system.