“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”

We are in pre-revolutionary France. This book is not published when it is written, but only a few years later, after Goethe translates it.

Equality is not a given in that era. People of various talents and gifts find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to choose between dignity and food.

It’s simply that some were chosen to be better than us. We observe the limits of the establishment’s futile struggle to repel external influences. Of course it cannot and of course you cannot. It’s not that you lack talent, it’s that you cannot transform it into bread.

You meet a supposed philosopher in Café de la Régence, one of the trend spots of the time. He measures your character, keeps asking you questions, and quizzes you about your virtue. Obviously, he (the philosopher) cannot refute the fact that life is extremely unjust for you and that many people in this world cannot hold their heads high. Still, he advises you according to his own standards and recommends that you behave like Diogenes. But you choose to follow your own path.

We are talking about a fascinating and satirical dialogue about art and morality. The eccentric nephew of the famous composer Jean-Philippe Rameau appears deeply distrustful of humanity, yet willing to sell himself for a plate of lentils.

And yet, he is so honest that it is impossible to consider him fake or a fraud. Together with the philosopher he converses with, sometimes even you don’t know how to react to his attacks, you might laugh, you might be outraged. Even today, there are many such young people.

And even the supposed philosopher (Diderot himself, perhaps?) doubts, gets confused, and wonders whether he is the one thinking wrongly, or whether the new generation has no hope.

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Mary was among the last people still surviving. The androids had overrun every unlikely place across the entire planet. The last strongholds were some 20 cities around the world.

To provoke and expose human weakness, they had created a series of contests titled

“Perfection and how it can be achieved.”

Real humans faced advanced androids in competitions for the best walk, the best whistle, the best limb folding, the best storytelling of texts, and other such small details.

Every human who lost was replaced by an android. So it was the day of the category “Beautiful female upright posture.” The androids had been preparing these models for a long time. Beautiful clothes, hairstyles, perfect shoes to highlight their perfect calves, and all the necessary things.

From the humans, Mary Watson was chosen. 19 years old, flawless smile, beautiful face. For a long time she had been trying to think how she would stand out. She had found the clothes, she would do a classic hairstyle, and then her presence would be what would win.

The time had come, the test would be motionless upright posture for 1 hour. The androids had made flawless shoes so they would not move even a millimeter during the test.

At the time of the presentation, the idea came to Mary. To take off her shoes and be barefoot. In her mind it was that her endurance would be what would set her apart. To the surprise of everyone who was there, she takes off her shoes, and that was when the bandages she had put on appeared, because she was afraid they might hit her and leave her wounds, she goes to her place, rises on her toes, and simply smiles.

So the trial begins, the minutes pass, the hour, and Mary remains motionless there in her place. The android judging committee clearly impressed, but also troubled about the state of their own models, wondered about the endurance and the physique of Mary.

Not accepting their defeat, they wanted to confirm that she was indeed human, and so they started exhausting examinations to support their defeat on Mary’s difference. But they found nothing. Mary was a simple human, with basic characteristics, but also something the androids were forgetting. Will, mental endurance, and empathy towards the human society that was continuously fading.

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It was around the end of 2019, the beginning of 2020. The pandemic had well and truly entered our lives. Work was now being done remotely, and we went out every now and then to take a walk or go to the supermarket. I had already finished the series I wanted to watch and the films, and I began wondering whether I would enter the difficult battlefield of books.

I had noted down many books that I wanted to read, but because of work before Covid, I never bought them. So I said:

“If you don’t do it now, it will never happen.”

So I entered to the online shop of my favorite bookstore and ordered, as I remember, around 10 books. They were the following:

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius,

Endurance - Alfred Lansing,

Walden - Thoreau,

Divine Comedy - Dante,

a collection of Pessoa’s poems and

one of Whitman’s,

a collection of Emerson’s essays,

The Art of War, and some others.

Obviously, they were delayed in arriving, but as soon as they came, I put them away, and I remember that I did not start immediately; about a week passed before I picked up the first book. I began methodically and according to a schedule, devouring the books page by page.

At some point, I realized that it would be a good idea to start noting down the passages I liked or the objections I had.

At first, I did it with Post-it notes (I don’t recommend it) while later I bought some small notepads and began transferring whatever I liked into them. The books began to take on my own character; I bent them, wrote on them, underlined them, everything. I showed them an attention that I had never shown before, at least not to something I had chosen myself.

During that period, I had begun cooking intensively at home; I had seen it as a form of psychotherapy. But I realized something. Just as we pay attention to what we consume as food for our bodies, we must show the same attention to what we feed our minds. Obviously, this does not concern only books, but everything: the conversations we have, the time we waste, and so on. And I am beginning to agree with something I had read some time ago: that we have moved beyond the Information Age and entered the Age of Attention. In the sense that everyone is competing to see who will distract each one of us.

So, if you are lucky enough to be starting the journey of finding yourself during this period through books or something similar, the only things I could tell you are these two:

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In 1940, Europe was being ravaged by the Second World War, with the nightmare of Nazism advancing. Zweig and other writers of the time went into exile in Central and, primarily, South America.

However, what this particular man was experiencing became unbearable for him, until, tragically, he decided to end his life, together with his wife, in Brazil, where they had sought refuge, in February 1942.

His final work, a masterpiece, to be precise, was Chess Novella. In it, we find ourselves aboard a ship sailing from New York to Buenos Aires. There, the passengers discover that the world chess champion is among them, although he appears to be rather distant and solitary: Mirko Czentovic.

As they gradually lose every chess game they play against the champion, one passenger, Dr. B., finds the courage to interrupt them and offer them advice for their next game. And somehow, their luck begins to change.

The magic lies in this man, and in the moment when he begins to describe how he acquired this skill at chess and at what cost.

Through his account, I literally lived in 1940s Vienna, read one of the most comprehensive indictments of Nazism, and, naturally, developed a profound respect for this ingenious game.

After reading the book, I tried to learn how to play and I am still trying to this day.

Moreover, if you surrender yourself to the author’s words, you begin to experience a battle with time, as well as with yourself. And I come to the following conclusion:

Material possessions, travels, and so on are all wonderful. But when a person communicates in this way, when they make you think, it is the greatest gift they could possibly give you.

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When I first started reading, I always wondered:

When I was growing up, the answer to these questions was unquestionable: choose a field [though what choice can someone really make at eighteen?] specialize in it, and become very good at one specific thing. That was the path. And, in a way, you would become the kind of person who had an opinion about everything, while literally knowing nothing.

Of course, that has not changed. I mean, specialization is still extremely useful. What I believe has changed is society itself. New technologies have made access to information easier than ever before. And here lies the great debate: is the information accurate or not? A big question mark.

I have lived through times when, in order to complete a school assignment, I had to search through two or three different encyclopedias and it was an assignment consisting of three paragraphs. Today, this can be done in a few minutes. Everyone has access to all the information on the planet. And I reach the following conclusion:

Information continues to be what it has always been; it is critical thinking that needs to be cultivated.

University gave me an excellent foundation, but the journey begins precisely afterward the moment when no one tells you, “Read this.” You have to choose. I made some rather unusual choices. Although I had completed a degree in Physics, years later I also completed a degree in Computer Science, and then I earned a master’s degree in Business Administration. As I said, my path has been an unusual one.

What happened in parallel with all this in my life, however, was what shaped me. I was fortunate and lucky enough to have a girlfriend {who later became my wife} who studied Philosophy. This brought before my eyes an unfathomable body of knowledge and a depth I would never have encountered on my own.

Now that I think about it, how did all these things fit together at that particular moment?

It seems obvious to me now, but what about then?

Let me continue. I began to look at my life through the method of reverse engineering. In simple terms, from the end toward the beginning, and I arrived at the following conclusions:

All the thoughts I have and all the ideas I imagine bringing to life are the result of these pursuits. A thought can travel from philosophy to physics, to business, and everywhere in between.

I just remembered such a moment as I am writing this. There was a period when I was reading Epicurean philosophers, and by chance I came across a book that would change the way I viewed my students in the classroom. The book was On Frank Criticism by Philodemus.

It concerns how someone in a position of advantage (such as a teacher or a manager) can offer constructive criticism without insulting anyone, but instead inspiring them.

That is why I believe the most valuable ideas are those that can be transferred, those that are portable. And this may also be a test worth applying to an idea one has had:

can it solve problems beyond the field in which it was discovered?

So as not to be absolute in what I say <I do not like doing that> I will add this: obviously, depth matters, as does specialization. But if curiosity is absent beyond that, specialization ultimately becomes a prison. The goal is not to know a little about everything. It is something much more demanding: to develop enough depth to make a genuine contribution somewhere, but also a broad enough range to recognize connections that others do not see. And every person can do this, because each one of us is unique.

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That’s exactly what Socrates did in front of his judges, and he finished them off once and for all.

Let me add the appropriate soundtrack as well.

In 404 BC, the Athenians lost the Peloponnesian War, and for eight months they were ruled by the Thirty Tyrants, imposed upon them by the Spartans after their victory. After democracy was restored, the Athenians searched for a scapegoat to help them relax. And what did they think of? To target someone theoretically weak.

Socrates was a ragged-looking figure who held endless dialogues every day in Athens with the youth of his time. In other words, he didn’t give them lessons; he engaged in conversations. He spent all day trying to inspire young people to care about great values and virtues, not about money and material goods. Hmm, that reminds me of something today.

Thus, the wisest citizen of the city was accused of corrupting the youth and not worshipping the ancestral gods of the time (the Athenians were quite, if not very, religious), but instead introducing new ones. So, he was summoned to make a defense speech in court.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hemlock, while he himself counter-proposed as his penalty free meals at the Prytaneum for the rest of his life. This was a distinguished honor reserved for benefactors of the Athenian state. He was given the opportunity to flee, both before and after his trial, but he refused. After all, he was innocent—why should he run?

The most democratic city in history (theoretically) murdered its most worthy citizen. So, even back then, it was not a time for people who think. Today, I wonder: has a comparable Socrates been born, or will one be born? And if so, how would we treat him?

We thus have a striking case where democracy attacks, unable to tolerate criticism. Socrates is guilty of having expanded his mind and taught his discoveries to his students. This was the reason for his execution: the thirst for free thought, the pursuit of knowledge, and the questioning of social establishments.

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In reality, nothing happened. Everything went smoothly during the lesson. A few yawns, a few interruptions, nothing serious, you know.

But at the end of the lesson, just as I was about to get into my car and drive home, I started having those endless thoughts.

For quite some time, I had doubts about whether I had made the right choice by becoming a teacher. I think I was mistaken either way. As it turned out, the problem wasn’t the profession. In fact, it was quite the opposite: it fulfilled me. My contact with the students, the conversations about their future, teaching, the difficult questions they asked, all of that.

The question I should probably have been asking was:

After graduating from the Physics Department, most of my fellow students followed the path of education, and so did I. At that moment, it seemed like the most natural thing to do. When you add to that all the stories I had heard since I was a child about having a permanent job, making a living, and so on, it reinforced the idea even more in my mind.

As I was probably sinking deeper into my thoughts, like another shipwreck survivor on a rotten raft, my mind went back to the past. There, I remembered a story from the first few months of my life as a student.

Being away from my parents and everything familiar, I wanted (or so I thought at the time) to rewrite myself from the beginning. So I decided that I would go to an online bookstore, order some books, and start reading.

Like some great “expert,” I obviously chose books at random. And, of course, I bought whatever was on sale, because no money. In the end, I ordered thirty books: Voltaire, Aeschylus, Carnegie, Greene, some terrible self-help books, bad translations, and so on.

A few days later, when I went to the bookstore to pick them up, the following exchange took place:

“Oh, so you’re the one with the thirty books. Are you opening a bookstore? What are we supposed to do?”

I burst out laughing and lowered my head, not knowing whether the person was mocking me, being ironic, or simply joking. In the end, I took the books home.

Looking at all those books, I realized that I genuinely hadn’t read anything particularly significant until then. Apart from the required books at school for literature class, nothing else. Oh, and White Fang by Jack London, if I remember correctly.

So I thought I would start with the shorter books, so that the poor thing wouldn’t get discouraged {that poor thing being me}.

One book led to another, until I reached what seemed like a giant to me: The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene.

I got completely lost in it. I read it as if there were no tomorrow. There was so much information that this was when I first started taking notes on the book, in notebooks, everywhere.

Obviously, none of those books had anything to do with Physics, because I have always been (and still am) that way. Like the raft I mentioned earlier, I simply drifted along and went wherever the current took me.

Then, after about four days of devouring that particular book, I reached the end. There it was: BIBLIOGRAPHY. A miracle and a disaster for my wallet.

“There’s the next list,” I remember saying. And that was where my reminiscing ended.

What I understand now is this: at that moment, I had chosen what I wanted to learn. Whether I was right or wrong, nobody had any expectations of me - no performance requirements, no grades, nothing.

For the first time, reading was something deeply personal.

Of course, I finished my Physics degree and became a teacher, as I said. Everything was as it was supposed to be. I took all the right steps that someone would have expected me to take.

But deep down, I knew that I wanted something else too. Perhaps that is a story for another time.

For many years, I believed that fear was what stopped people from making changes in their lives. Now, if you ask me, I believe it is familiarity.

If you think about it, it doesn’t even feel like a choice. It feels like a fact, like something that is the way it is simply because it has always been that way. You never question it.

You say, for example, “I’ll do it, sure, but I’ll do it later. When I have money, when I have time, when…”

Let’s admit it, though:

I no longer believe that major decisions are made at the moment we think about them. I believe something else happens. They take shape inside us before we realize it, with our choices, our actions, and our thoughts. With the books we read, the films we reject or choose - in everything.

We trusted ourselves and moved forward. Nothing more.

I am now finishing my second year here, and everything is going well. Better than ever, I would say.

And I think about this: the future in general begins to feel safer when you start trusting yourself—and the person you will become in the future.

If I had to give one piece of advice, mainly to myself, it would be this:

And returning once again to that doubt I felt after the lesson, sitting in the car, I think that perhaps, at that particular moment, what I was missing was certainty.

But that was not what I truly wanted. I wanted my life to belong to me. My choices, my actions—everything.

Sooner or later, that is what happens.

Perhaps that is the moment when life truly becomes our own.

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Montaigne’s Essays

I wouldn’t call it the best book, but it’s the book in which the author truly lives through the text. It feels like he’s speaking directly to you. So if I had to choose, it would be this one. It’s also huge, around 1,900 pages, and in many places you’ll agree, disagree, argue, or do whatever you’d do with a person over coffee.

Really, when I first opened it and read the early pages, it was like meeting someone who slowly became a friend, a best friend, everything. You learn everything about him, from what he ate to how he went to the toilet [when I say everything, I mean everything].

Especially during stressful periods, Montaigne was a rock, a helper, a companion.

At some point, I simply enjoyed putting on my favorite music from that time, John Coltrane & Duke Ellington, In A Sentimental Mood. Pure love.

I’d sit in the armchair, just read, converse with the book, and then go tell my wife what we’d “discussed,” where I’d disagreed, and so on. Crazy moments…

And just when you thought it was tiring you, because it jumps from topic to topic mercilessly, I realized something:

Through the Essays, Montaigne managed to turn ordinary, logically mundane life into art. It’s incredible how beautiful he presents all of this.

That’s also where I understood, or at least found, the level of self-knowledge I’ll try to reach (though probably never will). Montaigne shows us that we shouldn’t fear change; on the contrary, we should embrace it. One moment he’s a fanatical Epicurean, the next a Stoic, and he ends up as a devout Christian.

And that’s probably how it is, that’s how we all are. No single label can define any human being.

Most likely, if you ever start reading it, know that we’re talking about a book you’ll return to for a whole lifetime, and about a person you’ll probably come to regard as a friend (I hope).

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I believe it is a book about freedom, and ultimately about the cost of our choices.

Some sentences stay with you long after you finish a book. For me, this was one of those sentences.

The older I get, the more I believe Thoreau was not referring to poverty or unhappiness. He was pointing to something more subtle. A life that slowly takes shape around us until, one day, we realize we never consciously chose it. A life lived on autopilot.

This was another sentence that stayed with me: his answer wasn’t more productivity or ambition, but simplification. Not as deprivation, but as liberation. The removal of unnecessary burdens and the deliberate choice of what deserves to remain.

This may be the single most valuable idea in the book. Most things are not paid for with money. They are paid for with time, attention and energy.

Every purchase is also a decision about how we will spend a portion of our life.

Thoreau offers a different definition of wealth. A wealthy person is not necessarily the one who can acquire the most. A wealthy person is someone who depends on the fewest things.

Where I Agree

Freedom often increases as dependence decreases. Thoreau understood something that remains true today:

the more things we need to feel content, the more our lives depend on factors beyond our control.

The fewer things we need to feel content, the more freedom we preserve when circumstances inevitably change.

Where I Disagree

Thoreau withdrew from society for two years. Few of us have that option. Community, family, friendship, and responsibility are also part of a good life.

The challenge isn’t to abandon society but to remain independent while living within it.

Before acquiring anything new, ask yourself:

Not just money, but time, attention, and freedom. Because freedom is the first thing we give away.

Question to Consider

What in your life today costs more time, energy, and attention than the value it gives back?

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A few quietly become part of who we are.

Over the past few years I have found myself returning to a different question :

Which ideas are worth returning to?

Not simply which books are worth reading, but which ideas deserve to become part of our lives.

Every day, we consume an endless stream of information. We read articles, watch videos, save quotes, and highlight passages we promise ourselves we’ll revisit someday.

Most of them quietly disappear.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet paradoxes of our time. We have never had easier access to knowledge, yet we rarely give ideas the time needed to become part of us.

More than four hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne approached this differently. After retiring from public life, he transformed one of the towers of his family estate into a place devoted almost entirely to reading, reflection, and writing. Above his library, the wooden beams of the ceiling were covered with quotations from Scripture and classical authors, ideas he wanted to encounter again and again.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the ceiling wasn’t decoration at all.

It was a practice : a way to ensure certain ideas were encountered often enough to shape judgment rather than merely inform it.

Montaigne understood that the ideas that shape our lives are rarely those we encounter only once. They are the ones we choose to live alongside. Like trusted companions, they quietly influence the decisions we make long after we have forgotten where we first encountered them.

Today, we are surrounded by memorable ideas. We post them. We save them. We share them. Sometimes we even hang them on our walls. Yet ideas become valuable not because we admire them, but because we return to them often enough to live by them.

Perhaps wisdom has less to do with discovering profound thoughts than with returning to the same ones often enough that they quietly begin to shape the way we live.

That is why I keep returning to the same authors. Not because I expect them to tell me something new, but because I want to discover whether I have changed since the last time I opened their books.

For more than a decade, I have returned to Pessoa; whenever life becomes noisy, his poetry brings me back to myself. I return to Emerson and Thoreau for a different reason. Reading them often feels less like reading a book and more like having a conversation with a quieter version of my own mind.

Each time I return, I notice something I had overlooked, not because the book has changed, but because I have.

Perhaps that is one reason rereading is so valuable. A great book does not simply reveal new ideas. It reveals the person we have become since the last time we opened it. That may be one of the greatest gifts a book can offer: not new answers every time, but a new mirror.

The world encourages constant consumption: read another book, listen to another podcast, watch another video, keep moving. There is nothing wrong with any of it. But there is also value in stopping, asking which ideas deserve a permanent place in our lives, which principles are worth revisiting, which books have earned the right to accompany us for years rather than weeks.

From My Library

Essays

When Michel de Montaigne withdrew from public life, he wasn’t escaping the world; he was trying to understand it and himself more honestly. The tower he built became more than a library; it became a place where the same ideas could be encountered again and again until they shaped not only his thinking, but his character.

Perhaps that is why his Essays still speak to us more than four centuries later. He didn’t write because he believed he had found the answers; he wrote because he was willing to examine his own life with unusual honesty. The greatest value of the Essays may not be that they answer our questions, but that they teach us to keep asking better ones. In doing so, he gave the rest of us permission to do the same.

Question to Consider

In an age that rewards constant novelty, returning may quietly become a competitive advantage.

So perhaps the most important question isn’t how many books we read this year. It’s this: which ideas have earned a permanent place in the way you think?

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What does security actually mean?

The more I observe the world, the more I suspect that we have confused security with stability.

The desire for security is perhaps one of our deepest instincts. Since we became self-aware, we have tried to reduce the uncertainty of existence. We look for shelter, food, community, and steadiness. In modern life, that same instinct takes different forms: a degree, a good job, a steady income, or a carefully designed life plan.

There is nothing wrong with any of these things, they all have value. The question is whether we have mistaken them for security itself.

For much of the last century life was relatively predictable. You could study a profession, build a career and reasonably expect the rules of the game to remain largely unchanged for decades. Institutions were stronger, careers were more linear and change tended to move slowly.

Today, the picture looks different.

Technology is transforming entire industries within a few years. AI is beginning to reshape the nature of many professions. New companies appear seemingly out of nowhere and challenge long-established giants. Knowledge acquired ten years ago may no longer hold the same value. The pace of change has become part of the environment itself.

None of this means we are living through an age of collapse.

But it does mean we are living through an age of greater uncertainty and perhaps that forces us to reconsider what we mean by security.

Many people believe security is found in stability. They assume that if they can eliminate enough uncertainty, they will finally feel secure. Yet reality has a peculiar way of challenging that belief. Economies change. Markets change. Technologies change. People change. Even we ourselves change.

Perhaps true security is not found in our attempt to freeze the world around us, but in our ability to move with it. The goal is not to predict every surprise. It is to become the kind of person who can respond well when surprises arrive.

The more I study history, business and technological developments, the more convinced I become that the people who navigate major disruptions successfully are rarely those with the perfect plan. They are the people who know how to adapt when the plan stops working.

This is more than a practical skill.

It is a way of seeing the world.

The ability to learn new things, revise old beliefs, acquire new skills, start over when necessary and remain calm when circumstances change.

I’ll share a personal example.

Years ago I graduated with a degree in Physics and began working in education. As technology accelerated, I realized the world was changing faster than my assumptions. I eventually started over: I studied Computer Science, then completed an MBA.

Looking back, it was not the degrees that gave me the greatest sense of security. It was learning how to adapt.

That created something far more valuable than temporary stability: options. Options are often the most practical form of freedom.

Options rarely appear overnight. They are usually the result of years spent learning, experimenting and staying curious. Every skill we acquire, every meaningful relationship we build and every new perspective we gain quietly expands the range of choices available to us.

A person with a single skill has fewer options than someone who invests in lifelong learning. A person who depends on a single source of income is more vulnerable than someone who has developed multiple capabilities. A person who can adapt to new environments has greater freedom of movement than someone who relies entirely on stable circumstances.

Perhaps true security is not the absence of uncertainty. Perhaps it is the confidence that, whatever happens, we will be able to respond.

Plans still matter. Goals still matter. But they become truly meaningful only when supported by something deeper: the ability to change course when reality takes a different path than the one we imagined.

If this is true, then perhaps it is worth spending less time trying to predict the future and more time cultivating abilities that remain useful regardless of what the future brings. Learning, critical thinking, communication, adaptability and curiosity do not protect us from change. They help us move through it.

For centuries, people searched for security by trying to make the world more predictable. Perhaps the better strategy is different. Instead of asking how to eliminate uncertainty, we might ask how to become the kind of person who can navigate it well.

From My Library

Walden

Henry David Thoreau did not move to Walden Pond to reject society. He wanted to discover which parts of life were genuinely necessary and which were simply inherited expectations. That question feels surprisingly modern. The fewer things we require to feel secure, the more adaptable we become. Perhaps resilience begins not by accumulating more, but by becoming less dependent on what we cannot control.

Question to Consider

Security often feels like something we either have or don’t have. But perhaps it is something we gradually build through the choices we make.

How much of your current sense of security depends on things you actually control?

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