It doesn’t exactly keep me up at night, but like most people, I have a low-level suspicion that I’m paying for a bunch of stuff I don’t need.

At the beginning of the year, I went through all the various accounts and credit cards for my businesses, and sure enough, that’s exactly what I found.

There was an IMDb Pro account still active from a podcast producer who left three hires ago. We were paying for three cloud storage services when one would have sufficed. Somehow, we ended up with two separate enterprise Zoom accounts…and one had been upgraded to handle a large number of people on a call we were doing and was never downgraded. As I dug in, I found more redundancies, I found services that had sneakily ratcheted their fees up month after month and then just stuff I don’t think we ever signed up for in the first place.

This, of course, is a microcosm of our digital and subscription economy these days. It’s also, I think, a metaphor for life. We don’t just accumulate stuff, we accumulate drag. We accumulate drains and leeches that instead of physically taking up space, overwhelm and impede our ability to operate and think.

It turns out that the monthly cost of all these unnecessary expenses was almost enough to cover the salary of a new employee! Plus my mental bandwidth–to say nothing of the corresponding emails all these services send–was increased as well. It’s basically the same feeling I get whenever I clean out the garage or organize a doom drawer.

So that’s what I am thinking about now that spring is upon us: how I can declutter my life—physically, mentally, and emotionally—and how you can do the same.

(And by the way, I’m getting together with thousands of Stoics from around the world to do some spring cleaning as part of ​The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge​ on March 20th. It’s a set of 10 daily, actionable challenges designed to help you clean up your life and spring forward without the weight of bad habits and vices. ​You can learn more and sign up here​. I hope to see you there!)

Clean up your information diet. In programming, there’s a saying: “garbage in, garbage out.” The question is, what are you allowing in? Many of us absorb too much garbage—whether it’s from the news we watch, the people we follow on social media, or even certain people in our lives. Spring is a great time to ask: Where do misery, negativity, dysfunction, and chaos sneak into my life? And then do something about it. Look at your “information diet.” When was the last time Twitter actually left you feeling informed? Reddit? Cable news in an airport? If it isn’t leaving you calmer or wiser, ​maybe it’s time to cut it off at the source​. You don’t have to be uninformed—just be intentional about what you consume and who you engage with. Personally, I prefer reading books about history and human nature (​here’s a list of timely books I put together for 2025​). They’re not all fun and sunshine—there’s plenty of darkness, too—but I learn far more from that than from endless scrolling. I’m deliberate about which chats and texts I participate in and who I spend time with. I aim to let in the opposite of garbage, because that leads to the opposite of garbage out.

Destroy a DOOM box. We all have them—those boxes, bins, or junk drawers stuffed with random odds and ends we don’t actually need. This is what’s known as a DOOM box—“Didn’t Organize, Only Moved.” In one of the few jokes Marcus tells in ​Meditations​, he writes about people who accumulate so much stuff, they don’t even have a place to shit. Seneca famously said that people aren’t just weighed down by their possessions—they are owned by them. That overstuffed box in your garage, the junk drawer spilling over, the storage closet packed with forgotten things—what are you really holding onto? If you wouldn’t go out and buy it today, why are you keeping it? Grab a bag, empty the doom box, and purge anything you don’t truly need. Whether you trash it, donate it, or sell it, clearing out physical clutter clears mental space and reduces the number of things that “own” you.

Quit your vices. In another sense, we can be “owned” by bad habits. Seneca talks about how even a powerful Roman general can be mastered by ambition. Many of us are slaves to habits or substances. There’s a story I tell in ​Discipline is Destiny​ about the physicist Richard Feynman feeling a sudden midday urge for a drink. Realizing alcohol’s hold on him, he quit cold turkey. Dwight Eisenhower, a four-pack-a-day smoker, had a heart attack and simply gave himself an order to stop. He realized he was not in command—the habit was in command. Ask yourself: What has control over me? Is it caffeine, social media, Netflix, junk food—something more serious? I once heard addiction described as losing the freedom to abstain. If you struggle to avoid something you don’t truly need—as Feynman realized—you’re dealing with a compulsion. With spring on the horizon, ask yourself what you’re hooked on. Where have you lost the freedom to say no? And how can you reclaim your power by refusing to feed that habit? For some, it’s as simple as not buying junk food. For others, it may involve support groups or a treatment program. In any case, spring is an ideal time to assess who—or what—is in command, and to reassert your autonomy. If you want a happier, more fulfilling life, decide which vices you’re no longer willing to let rule you.

Limit what has access. We are way too reachable. You have Facebook messages and text messages. People can call your phone. People can call you on WhatsApp. People can hit you up on Instagram and LinkedIn and Slack and Telegram. People can send you a package at your office and send junk mail to your house. This is insane! There should not be a DOZEN ways that people can get ahold of you. Who could possibly keep track of that? I’ve limited it to three ways people can get in touch with me: You can text, email, or call me. Email is day-to-day work stuff, texts are for friends and family, and when my phone rings, it’s usually something important from either one of those groups. I no longer feel the need to check 20 different apps and inboxes 50 times a day, because I know everything that actually matters will come in through one of those three channels.

Close the loop. I have a bunch of emails in my inbox waiting on a signature, waiting on a reply, waiting on a form or a selection. Why am I just letting them sit? It always takes less time to close these loops than I think…yet I let them sit there. I’ve found it really helpful to just dedicate, say a concentrated 15 minutes, to closing as many of them as possible. The mental relief that comes from clearing them out is always worth far more than the small effort it takes to get them done.

Delete the loop. At the same time, I have a bunch of emails that I told myself I was going to reply to but honestly, I don’t need to. Or too much time has passed for it to be worth it. So another 15 minutes where I just go through and mark these as read—or better off, delete them—is time well spent, too.

Make amends. This is actually one of the challenges in ​Spring Forward​: identify any grudges we’re holding—conflicts, disagreements, or sources of animosity in our lives. How can we clean those up or clear them out? What can we apologize for? Years ago, there was someone I got into a big fight with over one of my books. I eventually emailed them, saying, “Hey, here’s what I’ve been carrying, and I wish I’d done it differently. I feel bad about the consequences for you. I’m sorry.” I’d love to say we became friends afterward, but they didn’t accept my apology—instead, they hurled more anger at me. It was obvious they still carried a lot of resentment, but making amends is also a gift you give yourself. I said what I needed to say, so I’m no longer ruminating or waiting for an apology from them. I owned my role in it. I tried to be who I want to be. If they aren’t there yet, that’s okay—I did what I could. As Marcus Aurelius said, the best revenge is not being like the person who wronged you. Maybe they’ll never see your side, but at least you won’t turn into them. We can’t change the past, but we can take responsibility: acknowledge our mistakes, own the pain we caused, learn from it, practice empathy, and try to repair it. We also have to forgive those who’ve hurt us and seek forgiveness from those we’ve hurt. What we can’t do is pretend it never happened. Clearing away that emotional clutter is part of a true spring cleaning—a deep clean for your life.

Get out in nature. There’s a Japanese term I love—shinrin-yoku—which translates to “forest bathing,” getting outside in nature. Marcus Aurelius talked about “washing away the dust of earthly life,” and getting outdoors is one of the best ways to do that. Whether it’s a long walk, a bike ride, or just a quiet moment outdoors, nature has a way of clearing away a cluttered mind. I live out in rural Texas partly because I love the beauty of the natural world. Seneca called it a “temple of all the gods.” Yet so many people spend their lives in cubicles, offices, or cars—one sealed environment to another—missing the world’s beauty. Recently, during a trip to Utah, I went for a run, cut through a cemetery, and spotted deer running by. I returned to my hotel feeling amazing. So the question is, how are you making time for nature? You might get dusty or muddy, but you’ll come back feeling cleaner and clearer than ever.

Delegate and automate. Something I often find myself asking myself, is this something only I can do? If the answer is no—and you can afford to, delegate it. If you can’t yet afford to, automate it. Time is the most precious resource. You have to find people who are good at things and empower them to help you. You have to be strong enough to hand over the keys, to relinquish control so that you can keep the main thing the main thing and not be distracted and weighed down by the rest.

Eliminate a pointless, recurring meeting. The recurring meeting gets on our calendar for a good reason or with a clear purpose. But it doesn’t take long for it to become a “wretched habit,” as Musonius Rufus said. Take a look at your calendar. Ask: is this meeting still necessary? Or could the same result of a dragged-out meeting be accomplished in a couple of minutes over email? If so, time to eliminate it.

Be protective of your time. One question I regularly ask my employees—and myself—is: What’s eating your time, and is it really a good use of it? A brief “time audit” can be eye-opening. Think about what you spend the most time on. Maybe it started small but ballooned into an enormous time sink. Just like a nutritionist might ask, “What are you eating?” and have you keep a food diary, try to keep track of how you spend your day. My screen-time app, for instance, might show how much time I spend on texts, email, Instagram—then I have to ask, Is that the best use of my time? As we head into spring, it’s not just about decluttering physical items; ​it’s also about shedding “time sucks.”​ Marcus Aurelius gives us a test: Ask yourself, if I were to die soon, would I be afraid because I couldn’t keep doing this? The truth is, we often spend our time on frivolous or wasteful activities. At work, I remind my team—and myself—that if something’s taking up too much time, maybe there’s a better way. Now, before life gets busy again, is the perfect moment to identify those time drains.

Simplify your to-do list. When we were working on ​​What You’re Made For​​, George Raveling told me that once in a meeting at Nike, the president asked the team, “Would we be better off doing 25 things good or 5 things great?” George said he still applies that day-to-day. “My day really revolves around just three or four things…I try to declutter the day and say, ‘Okay, if I can get these four things done today, it will be a good day.’” As for me—every day, on a notecard, I write down 5-6 things I want to get done that day. Every day, I cross these off and tear up the card. That’s it. That’s the system.

Eliminate the inessential. We have a lot on our plates: emails to answer, calls to make, meetings, errands, groceries, kids to drop off, social media—the list goes on. Marcus Aurelius said if you want more tranquility—if you want to improve—you have to ask: Is this essential? Most of what we do or say isn’t. If we eliminate the inessential, he says, we gain the double benefit of doing the essential things better. So, to declutter your life, you have to say NO more often. Remember: No is a complete sentence. You don’t need to explain or justify it. As Seneca reminds us, many of us live in a state of “busy idleness,” endlessly doing things we don’t need to do. So as spring arrives (and every other season, too), keep asking yourself, Is this essential? What if you said no? How much more productive, happy, and content could you be with stronger boundaries and clearer priorities? You only have one life—stop wasting it, and stop letting people steal your time. Say no, and do less.

***

That’s some of the things I’m doing to declutter and find clarity in my life.

If you’re ready to take your own efforts to the next level, I’d love for you to join me in the ​Spring Forward Challenge​ from Daily Stoic.

It’s packed with powerful exercises rooted in the best Stoic insights and strategies, and thousands of people around the world will be participating.

Sign up at ​dailystoic.com/spring​—we start on March 20th. I hope to see you there, ready to clear out the clutter and make room for what truly matters.

Like most people, I am a product of my mentors.

But when I talk about one of the most influential people in my life, everyone usually assumes I am referring to Robert Greene. Robert, of course, taught me so much and I continue to learn from him.

Actually…there’s someone else. Someone whose wisdom, generosity, and curiosity have shaped my life, work, and thinking more than almost anyone I’ve met. Someone who has influenced how I approach relationships, how I treat others, and how I try to give back.

That someone is George Raveling.

Who is George Raveling? I think he’s one of the most remarkable people of the 20th century. His story is extraordinary. His father died when he was young. His mother was placed in a mental institution, and he was raised by his grandmother. He went to a series of Catholic schools, thrived as a basketball player at Villanova, and after serving briefly in the Air Force, found his calling in coaching. He became the first African American basketball coach in what’s now the Pac-12 and went on to have a Hall of Fame career, leading programs at Washington State, the University of Iowa, and USC. He was instrumental in bringing Michael Jordan to Nike and has mentored some of the most influential coaches in college basketball. I’ve watched John Calipari, Shaka Smart, and Buzz Williams all call him to get his advice on something when I’ve spent time with George. In college basketball, he’s known as the Godfather.

And if that weren’t enough, George owned the original typewritten draft of the “I Have a Dream” speech, which Martin Luther King Jr. handed him while he was working security at the March on Washington. In an extraordinary gesture, in 2021, George donated the historic document to his alma mater, Villanova University, on the condition that they collaborate with the Smithsonian and the National Museum of African American History to loan it out, ensuring that more people can see and be inspired by it.

He’s been a mentor and friend to me, someone whose message I’ve tried to help share with the world. Most recently, I played a small role in bringing to life his memoir, ​What You’re Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports​, which I pitched to my publisher. It just came out yesterday.

In this article, I wanted to share some of the many lessons I’ve learned from George over the years and in the process of working on the book with him. His wisdom and example have influenced my life in ways I never could have imagined—I hope these 21 lessons impact you as much as they have impacted me…

– You have two choices today. George told me that when he wakes up in the morning, as he puts his feet on the floor but before he stands up, he says to himself, “George, you’ve got two choices today. You can be happy or very happy. Which will it be?” (Voltaire put it another way I love: The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.)

– Always be reading. He told me a story from when he was a kid—“George,” his grandmother asked him, “do you know why slave owners hid their money in their books?” “No, Grandma, why?” he said. “Because they knew the slaves would never open them,” she told him. To me, the moral of that story is not just that there is power in the written word (that’s why they made it illegal to teach slaves to read), but also that what’s inside them is very valuable. And the truth is that books still have money between the pages. My entire career has been made possible by what I read.

– Go learn things and meet people. It’s not enough to read—you have to go down rabbit holes, look up words you don’t know, share interesting ideas with others, earmark pages, and make notes in the margins. A few years ago, George was reading a book when the word “mastermind” caught his eye. He’d never heard it before. As was his habit, he circled it and made a note to look it up later. That sent him down a rabbit hole—researching the concept, reading articles, and learning about an event called Mastermind Dinners. He shared what he found with a few friends, including me. As it happened, I knew the guy who ran the Mastermind Dinners and offered to connect them. “Go for it!” George replied. Not long after, I got a photo of him at the conference in Ojai, California. He was the oldest person there. The only one not an entrepreneur. The only one from sports. The only one retired. But by the end, he was everyone’s favorite. People told me afterward that George was the highlight of the event. He asked great questions, he listened, he shared, he made people think. He could have told himself he didn’t belong. Instead, he showed up, stepped outside his comfort zone, and kept learning—at eighty-three!

– Keep a commonplace book. At his house, George has these big red binders filled with notes. He calls them his “learning journals.” They’re his version of a commonplace book—a collection of ideas, quotes, observations, and information gathered over time. The purpose is to record and organize these gems for later use in your life and work. It’s a habit he’s kept since 1972. To this day, he told me, “I go back and just read through them. I’ll just get one of the binders and I’ll sit down at the kitchen table and start reading through it. Sometimes I come across stuff that is more applicable today than it was when I wrote it in there.”

– Live like it’s the 4th quarter. George nearly died in a brutal car crash at 57. When he woke up in the hospital, a police officer told him, “Coach, you don’t know how lucky you are.” He took that to heart—treating every day after as a second chance, an opportunity to do more, learn more, and give more. He went on to have a whole second act, joining Nike, shaping the future of basketball, and achieving things he never imagined. We shouldn’t need a near-death experience to wake us up to what we have. Seneca put it well: Go to bed each night saying, I have lived. If you wake up, treat it as a gift.

– Learn from everyone. George once said in an interview that I was his mentor, which, of course, is preposterous. But I’ll take the point: you can learn from anyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re younger than you, if they live a completely different life, or even if you disagree with them on 99% of things. Everyone can teach you something. Anyone can be your mentor.

– Do the most important thing. When George became Nike’s Director of International Basketball at 63, he had no prior corporate experience and was overwhelmed by self-doubt. Until a mentor gave him a simple system: “When you leave the office every day, leave a yellow pad in the middle of the desk, and when you come in the morning, write down the three most important things you gotta get done that day in that order. That day, do not do anything else but the first thing on the pad. And if you get the first one, then you go to the second one.” That structure put order to his day and gave him a sense of purpose. Instead of spinning his wheels or getting lost in distractions, he focused on what mattered most. One thing at a time.

– Choose opportunity over money. George once told me, “Never take a job for money. Always take a job for opportunity.” That’s how he’s lived his life, and that’s why he’s had such an incredible life. It’s why he took the job at Nike, not despite the fact that he had no experience as a global corporate executive—but precisely because he had no experience as a global corporate executive. It was a chance to step into something completely new, to learn, to grow, to challenge himself. He didn’t take the job because it was safe. He took it because it was filled with opportunities—to meet fascinating people, travel the world, immerse himself in different cultures, and bring the game he loves to new places and new people. Most people would have stuck to what was comfortable and familiar, but George went where the opportunity was.

– Always be prepared. When we were working on ​What You’re Made For​, George and I had weekly calls that ran for one to two hours. It was my job to pull stories and lessons out of him. George is obviously the boss and the questions were largely about his life, so it could have been pretty relaxed, but that’s not his style. He clearly spent hours preparing for each hour we were on the phone, always coming intensely prepared with notes, questions, and ideas ready to go. He treated every call the way I imagine he prepared for a big game back in his coaching days or a high-stakes meeting at Nike. In one of our calls, he told me, “Right to this day, I think it’s disrespectful to go into a meeting and not be prepared.”

– Trust is earned. George and Michael Jordan have known each other for decades. Their relationship is built on trust—so much so that George told me, “Other than my mom and my grandma, never in my life have I had anybody who trusts me as much as Michael Jordan.” And he’s never done anything to jeopardize it. In all their years of friendship, even when he ran Michael’s basketball camps for 22 years George said, “I’ve never asked Michael for anything in my life—no money, no tickets to games, nothing.”It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that when George told Jordan he should seriously consider signing with Nike, Jordan listened. That billion-dollar decision was the result of the trust Coach built when he coached Jordan on the ‘84 Olympic Team. As Jordan writes in the foreword (not something he does often!) to What You’re Made For, “There are all kinds of stories out there, but George is truly the reason I signed with Nike. As I’ve said before, I was all in for Adidas. George preached for Nike, and I listened.”

– Practice the art of self-leadership. George once told me, “One of the most underrated aspects of leadership is our ability to lead ourselves.” Before you can lead a team, a company, or a family, you have to be able to lead yourself. And isn’t that what the Stoics say? That no one is fit to rule who is not first ruler of themselves?

– Be a positive difference maker. George has a powerful question he often asks: “Are you going to be a positive Difference Maker today?” It’s a question that challenges you to think about the impact you want to have each day. I think about it all the time.

– Find the good in everything. George once texted me out of the blue, “I am absolutely unequivocally the luckiest human being on planet Earth.” He sees everything that’s happened to him, even the terrible things, even the adversity, even the unfair things. He sees them as all leading up to who he is now. He walks through the world with a sense of gratitude and appreciation and a belief in his ability to turn everything into something positive.

– Tell them what they mean to you. When we would do our calls for the book, it caught me off guard at first. George, before hanging up, would say, “I love you.” I’m not used to that—at least not from people outside my family. But George never hesitated. “I’ve learned that it’s hard for people, especially men, to say ‘I love you,’” he told me. Even with his own son, he noticed that for years it felt uncomfortable for him to say it back. “It’s strange,” George said, “because every one of us has a thirst to be loved, appreciated, acknowledged, respected. And yet, for some reason, we struggle to express it.” So George has made a habit of saying things like, “I appreciate you.” “I respect you.” “I’m glad you’re my friend.” “I’m here for you.” Simple words that so many people rarely hear. George didn’t assume people knew how he felt—he told them.

– It’s up to you. George used to give a talk at basketball camps titled, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” He said, “At the end of the day, either our hands are gonna be on the steering wheel of our lives or someone else’s hands are gonna be on the steering wheel of our lives.”

– Do less, better. Once in a meeting at Nike, the president asked the team, “Would we be better off doing 25 things good or 5 things great?” George said he still applies that day-to-day. “My day really revolves around just three or four things…I try to declutter the day and say, ‘Okay, if I can get these four things done today, it will be a good day.’ Every day, on a notecard, I write down 5-6 things I want to get done that day. Every day, I cross these off and tear up the card. That’s it. That’s the system.”

– Cultivate relationships. While we were working on the book, George told me, “Often people say, how do you account for what’s happened to you in your life? And the one word I use to capture it all is: relationships. My whole life has been built on relationships. People seeing something in me that I didn’t see in myself.” When I look at my own life, the most pivotal moments, the biggest opportunities—they all came from relationships. From people who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Relationships aren’t just about networking; they’re about surrounding yourself with people who see your potential, sometimes before you do.

– Build your team. George sometimes refers to his family as Team Raveling, and his wife, Delores, as the CEO of their family. He talks about how too many people put more thought, effort, and strategy into their careers than they do into their families. They chase professional success with careful planning, clear goals, and relentless discipline—but expect their relationships to work out on their own. You wouldn’t expect a company to succeed by just winging it. A family is no different—it can’t thrive without leadership, communication, clearly defined roles, and a shared vision. Whether it’s your spouse, close friends, or a chosen family, you have to build your team with the same intention and commitment you bring to your work.

– Listen. George is one of the best listeners I’ve ever met. He says, “The quality of your conversations is greatly dependent on the quality of your listening.” I used to think I was a good listener, but watching George taught me how much better I could be. He doesn’t just wait for his turn to talk—he listens to understand.

– Become the go-to. When George was a player at Villanova, initially, he wasn’t getting much playing time. So he looked around and noticed something: no one on the team was a great rebounder. And he figured if he became the best rebounder on the team, his coaches would have no choice but to play him. So he made it his role. He invented his own rebounding drills and practiced them every day. By the time he graduated, he had set multiple rebounding records and was one of the best rebounders in the game. I love the idea of inventing a role for yourself—finding something that’s being overlooked or not addressed and deciding to become the go-to person for it. It’s not just a good strategy for athletes—it’s a way to make yourself indispensable in any field.

– Know your boundaries…and enforce them. I once connected George with someone interested in working on a project with him. Everything was going well—until they sent over the proposed terms. George didn’t argue or negotiate. He sent back a clear, firm email terminating the discussion. The other party was surprised and followed up to ask why. “The offer was insulting and ridiculous,” George explained. He didn’t waste time debating or trying to make it work. He knew his worth, and he wasn’t going to entertain anything less. Too many people accept bad deals out of fear or politeness, but George believed in setting clear boundaries—and enforcing them.

…

I will leave you with this…

Although he’s famous for being a coach, that’s not what it said on the door of his office. Instead, it said,

George Raveling

Educator

He, to this day, sees himself as a teacher. And he teaches by example, by how he lives his life. That’s why, even though I never played for George Raveling, I’ve learned so much from him. By watching how he carries himself, how he lives, and how he treats others, I’ve learned more than I ever could have from words alone.

​And you can, too​.

One of the most mind-blowing experiences of my life happened on a porch in East Austin. I had brought George Raveling, then 80, to visit with Richard Overton, then 111.

It struck me as ​these two kind and wise men​ chatted that I was in a sort of human wormhole.

When George was born in 1937 (he writes about this in his beautiful new book ​What You’re Made For​ that I was lucky enough to play a small part in getting published), the Golden Gate Bridge had just opened, the Great Depression ravaged America and Pablo Picasso was putting the finishing touches on his haunting, heartbreaking anti-war mural, “Guernica” as Europe plunged itself back into violence.

When Richard Overton was born in 1906, just a few miles down the road from my ranch, Theodore Roosevelt was president. As a child in Texas, he remembered seeing Civil War veterans walking around. Not many, but they were there—men who had fought for a Confederacy that had enslaved his ancestors. When he was a kid, Henry L. Riggs, a veteran of the Black Hawk War, was still alive. Riggs was born in 1812. And when Riggs was born, Conrad Heyer—a Revolutionary War veteran and the earliest-born person to ever be photographed—was still alive.

It’s easy to forget how little time separates us from what we think of as “history.” Richard plus two other people takes you back to before America was a country. He was a teenager during WWI, served in WWII, and then lived long enough to be the nation’s oldest living veteran at 112 and to hold my son, who, born in 2016, might live to see the 22nd century.

Here’s my son with Richard Overton

It’s easy to see history as this distant thing that happened to other people–people on the page or in old portraits. George played college basketball against Jerry West…the man who became the NBA logo. George Raveling was there the day of the March of Washington in 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. came down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and handed him the copy of the speech he gave that day. And then just a few decades later, George helped bring a young rookie named Michael Jordan to Nike, beginning a process that would turn Jordan into a billionaire. George would meet six or seven presidents starting with Truman. Richard would be flown to the White House to meet Obama.

Just two guys and you have a good chunk of American–and world–history. Just two guys shaking hands or witnessing or taking part in events and people that resound to this day.

History isn’t something distant or abstract. It’s just a few handshakes away. Just a few degrees of separation, it turned out, from one of my neighbors.

The past is not dead and distant, Faulkner observed. It’s not even past.

Did you know that England’s government only recently paid off debts it incurred as far back as 1720 from events like the South Sea Bubble, the Napoleonic wars, the empire’s abolition of slavery, and the Irish potato famine? For more than a decade and a half of the twenty-first century, there was still a direct and daily connection to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even today, the United States continues to pay pensions related to the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.

Did you know that in 2013 they discovered living whales​ born​ before Melville published ​Moby Dick​? Or the world’s oldest tortoise, Jonathan, lives on an island in the Atlantic and is 192 years old? Or that President John Tyler, born in 1790, who took office just ten years after little Jonathan was born, still has living grandchildren?

And that’s all relatively ‘modern’ history. The woolly mammoth was still roaming the earth while the pyramids were being built. Cleopatra lived closer to our time than she did to the construction of those pyramids. When British workers dug the foundations for Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, they found the bones of actual lions—creatures that had once roamed the exact spot they were standing on. History isn’t some far-off, untouchable thing. It’s right under our feet.

When we were doing a small construction project at the bookstore recently, we moved an old antique bar and found some paint on the wall, covered in plaster. Carefully scraping it away, we found a date and a kind of sign–January 16, 1922. What was happening in the world that day? Who were the people who stood there and supervised it being painted? A young Richard might have walked by and looked at it (from the outside, of course, as it was probably segregated).

When I lived in New Orleans, my apartment was partitioned out of a 19th-century convent. I’d head uptown ​to write what became my first book​, hopping on the longest continually running streetcar in the world, the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar Line. A train that has traveled the same tracks for nearly 200 years. How many millions of people have ridden those same rails? Sat, even, in the same seat? Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, George Washington Cable, Edgar Degas—could have looked out those very windows. They, along with so many others not as easily remembered, lived and struggled just as I did. Just as you do.

In Goethe’s ​The Sorrows of Young Werther​ (a favorite of Napoleon’s), there is a scene in which Werther writes to a friend about his daily trip to a small, beautiful spring. He sees the young girls coming to gather water and thinks about how many generations have been doing that—have come and had the same thoughts he is having.

“When I sit there,” he explains, “I see them all. The ancestral fathers, making friends and courting by the spring, I sense the benevolent spirits that watch over springs and wells. Oh, anyone who cannot share this feeling must never have refreshed himself at a cool spring after a hard day’s summer walking.”

I think about the things that happened in George’s life. I think about the horrible things that happened during Richard’s. I think about the progress made in both. I think of how much has changed…and how much has remained the same. I remember as I sat there on the porch, as Richard told me about a tree he had planted that was, some seven decades later, pushing up the foundation of the house, thinking of the Bible verse that Hemingway opens his book, ​The Sun Also Rises​, with: “One generation passeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose.” It was this passage, his editor would say, that “contained all the wisdom of the ancient world.”

Richard Overton on his porch (2017)

The view from Overton’s porch

And what wisdom is that? One of the most striking things about history is just how long human beings have been doing what they do. Though certain attitudes and practices have come and gone, what’s left are people—living, dying, loving, fighting, crying, laughing.

Instability. Uncertainty. Danger. Division.

This is one of the most consistent themes of the Stoics and particularly of ​Meditations​, the way that events flow past us like a river, the way the same things keep happening over and over again. That’s what history was, Marcus Aurelius said, whether it was the age of Vespasian, his own, or some time even more distant—it was “people doing the exact same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die, complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office and power.”

From this angle, human life looks very small. But also a connection with the past can make you feel very big–like you’re a part of something. That we are much more interconnected and closer to the center of things than it sometimes feels.

Indeed, these wormholes, illustrating the “great span” as they do, give us perspective. They remind us how many have been here before us and how close they remain. That even though we are small, we are also a piece of this great universe.

“Look at the past,” Marcus Aurelius writes in ​Meditations​, “and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events.”

There’s something lovely about intersecting with the past, about connecting with it.

I’ll cherish that day with Richard and George, as long as I live.

Hopefully, that will be a long time in the future…but even if it’s not, I feel like by spending time with them my life has already stretched far enough back in time.