Agasicles, king of the Spartans, despite his fondness for intellectual discourse, would not entertain the sophist Philophanes. When someone expressed surprise at this, he declared: ‘I want to be the student of men whose son I should like to be as well.’

Plutarch, Saying of Spartans

People haven’t quite understood my feelings towards Penelope Trunk. But that’s sort of what it’s about.

We should take advice from people who have their own life together. We should read writers who write because they have something to say, not because they are desperately craving validation and will do or say anything to get it.

As I slowly realized how badly she fails in both those areas, I went from anger to a sad, deep pity.

The Stoics had an exercise called Turning the Obstacle Upside Down. What they meant to do was make it impossible to ever not practice the art of philosophy. Because if you can properly turn a problem upside down, bad is constantly a new source of good.

Suppose for a second that you are trying to help someone and they respond by being surly or unwilling to cooperate. Instead of making your life more difficult, the exercise says, they’re actually directing you towards new virtues; for example, patience or understanding. Or, if something important is stolen or lost; a chance to be less dependent on material things. Marcus Aurelius described it like this: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Does this sound familiar? It should because it is the same thinking behind Obama’s “teachable moments.” Right before the election, Joe Klein asked Obama how he’d made his decision to respond to the Reverend Wright scandal. He said something like ‘when the story broke I realized the best thing to do wasn’t damage control, it was to speak to Americans like adults.’ And he what he ended up doing was turning a negative situation into the perfect platform for his landmark speech about race.

Remember that the common refrain about entrepreneurs is that they take advantage of opportunities. Well, this is something much different. The Reverend Wright scandal, the Special Olympics gaffe, a frustrating case where your help goes unappreciated, none of those are “opportunities” in the normal sense of the word. In fact, they are the opposite. They are obstacles. What a hustler does, or what a Stoic does is turn the obstacle into an opportunity.

I wrote a few pieces about running in college and looking back at them they were all very descriptive. They have little observations about how a shadow might look, what my breathing was like, how I reacted to a car that almost hit me. To me, those are signals that I was very much present and aware. It’s unfortunate running has become an entirely different activity.

Since then it’s slowly lost all semblance from that period. Every night same run, same speed, and one song going over and over. So they’ve all blurred together – there is not one night that stands out, it’s like they never even happened. I once listened to Springsteen’s ‘I’m on Fire’ thirty or forty times in a row. When I used to run on the treadmill on my building, it was the only way I could handle spending that much time in a tv-less basement. I stopped when it dawned on me that I’d often run for 40 minutes breathing heavily as I ran towards my own reflection and not even notice that I’d done it. There is something wrong with that. Very wrong.

This is exemplary of having no middleground. Another way to put it might be a “state of unthinking” – rather than reflecting on what has happened or working on what will happen. And simply being busy to the point where you’re not thinking anything isn’t a solution either. There should be a period where you’re simply present, reacting and receiving to what is going on around you.

So how do you become present and aware of the moment? (I’ve since learned that Buddhists called this “mindfulness”) Montaigne wrote that we should have rooms in our house that have nothing in them. You should spend time in them, he said, and be alone and without distraction. I went through my apartment last week and thought “if I was moving right now, what would I not take with me?” and got rid of all that stuff. I figure if you have less, there’s less to consider and less, ultimately, to fear losing. Or, what about turning off the soundtrack and ending its delusion right now. Finally, if descriptiveness can be indicator of someone’s presentness, why not act like you’re going to write about the exact moment you’re in?

I’ve heard that 15 seconds is about what the mind can comprehend as the ‘present.’ Watch yourself as you butt up against that barrier while you’re running. Each second you can go on past that is one you’re not subjected to regret, hope, anger, sadness, expectation, anxiety, stress or uncertainty. You’re just there. And by being there, you’re in control of yourself and your emotions. The resistance I felt at 15 seconds can be worked out just like a muscle.

As I ran last night I caught myself smiling for the first time I can remember doing it since I ran in college. I thought, ‘what a nice night’ and when I got home I didn’t feel the need to rush in and write something down before I forgot it. I was just finished.