F or as long as I can remember, I’ve considered myself an introvert. Crowds drain me, small talk feels tedious, and my best moments come in quiet reflection or one-on-one connection. Yet, even as an introvert, I’ve noticed something curious about myself: I thrive in certain social roles. I can stand in front of a room as a supervisor, perform on stage, speak publicly, or act as a public spokesperson—and during those moments, I am fully alive, alert, energetic, and connected. And then, just as quickly, the spell ends. The crowd disperses, the meeting closes, the applause fades—and I retreat, grateful to return to solitude. In his 2025 book The Gift of Not Belonging , psychiatrist Rami Kaminski introduces the term otrovert—derived from otro, meaning “other” in Spanish—to describe a distinct personality orientation not fully captured by the familiar introvert-extrovert spectrum. The term otrovert— someone who does not naturally seek belonging in groups but can engage deeply in cho...

Any power you have comes to you from far beyond. Everything is fixed, and you can't change it.           — Jesus to Pilate in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar T here’s something both oddly comforting and deeply unsettling about determinism. On one hand, it means you're not to blame for that embarrassing thing you said in 2014. On the other, it means you might not be steering the ship at all. Determinism is the idea that everything — your thoughts, your choices, your Spotify Wrapped — is the inevitable result of prior causes. Nothing happens without something causing it, and if we could rewind the universe and play it forward again, it would unfold the exact same way. This idea isn’t new. The Stoics were early champions. They believed the cosmos runs on logos — divine reason, a kind of metaphysical cause-and-effect. Their advice? Since you can’t change fate, stop whining and align yourself with it. Your only freedom lies in your attitude.  Fast forwa...

W hen the Stoic philosophers spoke of “God,” they didn’t mean a bearded man on a cloud. Their theos was not a supernatural personality outside of nature, but the totality of existence itself — the rational, ordered, living whole of which we are a part. In this sense, “God” was simply another word for the universe, infused with reason ( logos ), uncreated, eternal, and self-sustaining. Today, 2,000 years later, modern thinkers — whether they call themselves pantheists, naturalists, or just curious human beings — are finding themselves arriving at a similar place. The idea that the universe itself is divine, not because it’s magical, but because it is the total, interconnected reality that produces life, mind, and meaning, has a strange way of persisting. The Stoic View: God as Nature, Nature as God The Stoics, especially thinkers like Chrysippus and Marcus Aurelius, held that God and Nature were the same. The cosmos was a single, living organism, guided by reason ( logos ), and all...

I am a retired senior citizen. With fewer distractions and obligations, the quiet has grown louder — and with it, a deep, gnawing question:  Does anything really matter? The answer I keep arriving at, disturbingly but persistently, is: No. Not really. Not in the long run. Empires rise and fall. The sun will burn out. Everything I ever did or thought or loved will be forgotten. Even the Earth itself will one day vanish. What’s the point of trying to live “well” when I’m a temporary blip, a speck of dust floating in a cosmic shrug? That’s where I am. This, I suppose, is what some would call an existential crisis . It feels more like existential clarity—and it’s unsettling. But I’ve been walking the Stoic path for a while now. I'm a Prokopton — a student of Stoicism, someone hopefully progressing toward wisdom, even if imperfectly. The Stoics never promised comfort. They promised coherence. A way to live honestly in a world that doesn’t owe us meaning or anything else. S...

W hen I was a Christian I was taught to bring my pain, confusion, and doubt to the foot of the cross. “You can be healed,” I was told. “ If you have faith, God will make a way .” But the promised healing never came. When my faith-filled prayers were answered with silence, the reassuring comments of “It’s all part of God’s plan” started to sound like empty rhetoric. For that reason and many others I eventually left Christianity, carrying a burden of spiritual scaring. Now what? Seek psychological help? Eliminate my magical thinking by actually studying science? I tried those paths, and they did help. However, somewhere along the way, I quietly, curiously—stumbled onto the writings of modern and ancient philosophers. I mostly skipped the dry texts presented by academia, more drawn to  contemporary writers who are bringing philosophy alive. When I think of medicine, I often picture pills, prescriptions, or white-coated professionals poking at problems with stethoscopes. But...

F or over half my life, I was a Christian. My beliefs shaped how I understood the world, how I related to others, and how I measured meaning and morality. But over time, I began to question — not out of rebellion, but out of a deep and unsettling sense that the framework I once leaned on no longer made sense to me. What followed wasn’t a collapse, but a transition. Eventually, after many years identifying as a skeptical ex-Christian, I found myself drawn to Stoicism, an ancient philosophy of which up until then I had been ignorant. Now I identify as a Stoic Prokopton — a term that means “one who is making progress.” Not a sage, not a master, just someone walking the path with intention. This blog post is a short reflection on why I made the shift, a taste of what I’ve learned, and what I continue to discover as I walk this philosophical road. Why I Moved Away from Christianity Leaving Christianity wasn’t an easy decision. My faith had been a source of community, identity, and pur...

W e tend to think of laws as things written in books, backed by governments, and enforced by courts. But in our day-to-day lives, some of the most powerful "laws" aren’t laws at all. They’re habits. Or traditions. Or inherited opinions. And yet we follow them as if they were handed down from some sort of higher power. So how does a preference — a personal or cultural choice — evolve into something treated as sacred, untouchable, and binding? Why do certain habits feel as unbreakable as laws? Let’s explore it.  1. The First Step: Path Dependence and Institutional Inertia Sometimes, it starts small. A preference becomes a routine. A routine becomes a rule. This is known as path dependence — the idea that once a certain option is chosen, it becomes easier to stick with it than to change, even if better options exist. Think of the QWERTY keyboard layout . The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the 1878 Remington No. 2 typewriter, and it’...

I t seems like everyone and their emotionally-overwhelmed cousin is realizing they might be autistic these days. The internet is full of lists— Signs You Have Autism and Didn’t Know It , Why You Hate Phone Calls , Are You Socially Exhausted or Just Neurodivergent? —and suddenly, what used to be dismissed as “quirks” are adding up to something more significant. For years, autism was thought of in rigid terms: a childhood condition identified early, mostly in boys, with a set of clear-cut diagnostic criteria. But the understanding of autism has expanded, revealing a spectrum that includes adults who’ve spent decades masking their traits, often at great personal cost. The realization that autism isn’t rare—it’s just been overlooked—explains a lot about why so many people feel like they’ve been navigating life on hard mode without knowing why. Of course, there’s skepticism. Some roll their eyes at the surge in self-diagnoses, dismissing it as a TikTok trend or a product of over-patholog...

S o , as I get older, I've noticed my friend group is getting smaller. It's not that I suddenly hate everyone, but I'm finding it harder and harder to connect with people these days. Most conversations just feel...shallow. I'm craving chats about big ideas and personal growth, but it seems like everyone's stuck on complaining about politics or arguing about stuff they can't control. Seriously, everyone seems so into drama and negativity. It's like no one's happy unless they're worked up about something. All this complaining about things we can't change is just exhausting. There's so much good we could be doing, but it's like people would rather just be mad all the time. I think this whole thing is a sign of something bigger going on in our society. We're all so disconnected – from ourselves, our communities, even nature. And that's leading to a serious lack of meaning in our lives. People keep telling me that as I age, I should s...

I once believed that unconditional love was key to being a good parent. I worked hard at the job, hoping that my love would help my child to grow up well adjusted and happy. I learned the hard way that love isn’t always enough.  Early Signs What initially appeared as confidence slowly morphed into a need for control and praise. Occasional selfishness turned into a pattern of manipulation and emotional pressure. Before long I was second-guessing every choice I made, wondering what I did wrong. I hoped it was just a phase.  Facing Reality It wasn't just a phase. It was how things would be. The more I tried, the more I saw entitlement and cruelty. Even years after emancipation, I was expected to bail them out of their self-inflicted difficulties. I walked on eggshells, trying to avoid angry outbursts. No matter what I did, things didn't and wouldn’t change.  I chose to step back from the relationship. I chose peace.  Choosing to Walk Away Walking away was hard. Some ...

W hen I was in the workforce, I would hear coworkers complain regularly about how certain people seemed to be getting an unfair advantage in the workplace. Complaints could be anything from "so-in-so gets better hours, better wages, better assignments, better promotions, better treatment, etc., at work than I do .” The “I,” in that rant, of course, would be the person doing the complaining. Other coworkers would quickly take the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon to bemoan how they too were receiving unfair treatment in these and other areas. I wasn’t especially interested in joining any bitch brigade, so I would purposefully ignore the complainers and direct my full attention to doing my job in the best way I knew how. I adopted the attitude of "How others were being rewarded for their efforts was really nothing to me." All that mattered to me was that I was performing my assignments as professionally as possible and collecting the previously agreed upon wages. ...

This video suggests some practical insights on prioritizing well-being, cherishing genuine relationships, and letting go of what no longer serves a person after the age of 65.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children. And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the...

“Nothing exists save for atoms and space, all else is conjecture.” – Democritus, 460-370 BCE Through the advancements of scientific inquiry, we have come to recognize that our physical bodies serve as hosts to a vast and intricate ecosystem comprised of microorganisms, collectively known as the human microbiome. This microbiome encompasses bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archaea (unicellular organisms) that inhabit our skin, digestive tract, and other anatomical regions. It is estimated that the quantity of microbial cells may be equivalent to or even surpass that of human cells. The National Library of Medicine posits that the human microbiota consists of approximately 10-100 trillion symbiotic microbial cells harbored by each individual. These countless microorganisms fulfill significant roles in various bodily functions, including digestion, metabolism, and immune responses. They assist in the breakdown and absorption of nutrients, produce essential vitamins and compounds, and e...