Escape Velocity

Our reptilian brain is over three billion years old; our neocortex is only seventy thousand years old. A crime of passion is our logic’s inability to control our deep-seated reptilian urges.

Socrates encouraged us to "know our Selves." We know we are our own worst enemy, but we can’t help it! It is hard to see our own shadow, so we live unaware of it. Change is difficult, but we are forced to reinvent ourselves anyway. Take a look at this week’s article for guidance as to how to cope in these difficult times: Philosophy for a Time of Crises.

It often takes a massive outside force, an illness or a catastrophe to force us to abandon the past and embrace change. At the age of 17, I abandoned my home, family, and country to emigrate to America by myself. A decade later my family lost most of what they had in a revolution. Add to that a wonderful but difficult marriage, two kids, divorce, multiple recessions, a heart attack, the current pandemic and a potential economic depression ahead, and I am faced with the option to look at these life events as a series of setbacks, or the catapult I needed to reach the escape velocity to leave my ego’s orbit.

Only time will tell whether we are living in a major hinge in history, so don’t let a crisis go to waste. Take Gandhi’s advice to “become the change you want to see in the world." It has taken me a lifetime to learn what the Stoics meant by “the obstacle is the way.”

— Sina.