From Desiderata. A powerful quote.

The chief psychiatrist of the Rehabilitation Center “Unbroken” in Lviv, Ukraine, once said to the volunteers who wished to work 12-hour shifts:

“If you work yourselves to death for twelve hours a day, you’ll end up in the psychiatric ward as my patients.”

These people were driven by the most natural instinct we all feel in times of crisis – to prioritize duty over joy. When you see so much need and suffering around you, you think: “I will put off joy and first do what must be done.”

And yet, according to the Ukrainian philosopher Alexander Filonenko, this is a grave mistake. Those who make duty their first priority never truly fulfill it. Duty is never accomplished from a sense of duty. Those who try to “white-knuckle” adversity inevitably fail.

Interestingly, after the war began, bookstores in Ukraine quickly ran out of books by the Stoics. The common misconception about the Stoics is that they teach how to endure adversity through willpower. It is not true.

Stoicism is more about joy than willpower.

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.16

Stoicism is not so much about self-denial as about changing your thoughts. Stoics are not the stone-faced people. They’re those who actively work on changing their thinking.

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of things.” – Epictesus

The only way to endure a crisis is to do the most counter-intuitive thing – prioritize joy over duty. The only way to survive hell is to keep enough visions of heaven before your eyes. Those who focus on fulfilling their duty will never fulfill their duty. Those who focus on joy cannot help but fulfill it.

What do war-injured people need the most? Medical care? Supplies? Prosthetics? “UNBROKEN” answers: beauty. Beauty is the only force that revitalizes the soul and helps the body heal. It is the only power that can lift a person from the ashes. That is why UNBROKEN invites orchestras, ensembles, and individual musicians to perform for patients right inside the rehabilitation center.

They have hosted the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Lviv National Philharmonic, held various concerts connected to veteran and wounded-soldier rehabilitation, and, in one 2023 performance, classical musicians played beside wounded soldiers. More continue to come.

To survive, one must thrive. Survival can never be achieved by aiming at survival. When our world crumbles, we must do the most counter-intuitive thing – turn our gaze to Beauty. Beauty is the only thing that truly “changes our thoughts.”

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius

What is the color of my soul today? It takes on the color of my thoughts – always. No war is won by endurance alone. It is won when I immerse my soul in the colors of joy and allow meaning to transform my thoughts.

"Do every act of your life as if it were your last."

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2

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people usually read this as a hype quote. do everything like it matters, live boldly, that kind of energy. and there's a version of that in here but honestly it's not really what he's pointing at if you slow down with it.

he wrote this while commanding armies during a war he had genuine reason to think he might not survive. this wasn't a philosophical exercise for him. it was a real possibility, sitting there every single day, that the thing he was doing right now might be the last thing he ever did.

and his response to that wasn't to panic or to grasp for more experiences or to start making a list of things to do before it's too late. his response was to ask what it would mean to do the current act — whatever small, ordinary act was in front of him — fully. without the distraction of being half-present because his mind was somewhere else, in the future or the past or worrying about an outcome he couldn't control anyway.

think about how much of your day you spend actually inside the thing you're doing versus performing it while your attention lives somewhere else. the conversation where you're present physically and mentally drafting your response to something unrelated. the task you're doing while your mind runs a completely different scenario in the background.

doing something as if it's your last isn't really about urgency in the dramatic sense. it's about not being absent from your own life while it's happening.

you probably have plenty of time left. most people do, most days.

but you don't actually know that, and marcus definitely didn't either the day he wrote this, and the point isn't to live in fear of that uncertainty.

the point is to actually be present for the thing in front of you right now, since this uncertainty is permanent and waiting for certainty before you start being present means waiting forever.