La Vie Heureuse; La Brièveté de La Vie by Seneca – one of the greatest philosophers, and one of the richest men, more than ten of his books, and hundreds of other works are reviewed on my blog, and here is the plug for what is presumably the best gig there https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

La Vie Heureuse; La Brièveté de La Vie by Seneca – one of the greatest philosophers, and one of the richest men, more than ten of his books, and hundreds of other works are reviewed on my blog, and here is the plug for what is presumably the best gig there https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

This work has an excellent title, combining the essays of Seneca on The Happy Life and The Shortness of Life, both these notions have a simple answer from this great luminary, you have to be satisfied with what you have and…

 

-          Life is not short!

 

Quite an intriguing idea, which is demonstrated impeccably, by stating that we have enough time, it is just that we waste so much, and treat it as if we had enormous, indeed, limitless amounts and this makes me refer to

 

-          Schopenhauer, who said the way to read good books is by not reading the bad ones

https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/11/on-happy-life-providence-by-seneca-one.html this is where you have another look at opinions expressed by the richest man of his time, Seneca, on what makes a happy life

 

another take on The Shortness of Life is that of Umberto Eco, who said “The person who doesn’t read lives only one life. The reader lives 5,000. Reading is immortality backwards.” And if we add Schopenhauer’s formula…

then we have a Happy and Long, or eternal life, the only thing is we have to keep in mind another formula ‘First you want to get hold of something to say, then you fudge up a plot of a story of some kind, and then you put in bits of things you have seen and heard round the place, and then you try and make it all sound sort of interesting or witty or funny or unusual or striking in some way. If you find some bit that isn't that, you work at it until it is, or at least as near it as you can get.’ This one is from Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis, my favorite authorhttps://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/you-cant-do-both-by-kingsley-amis-my.html

 

stoicism is useful in this age, when we have stormy waters ahead, what if tariffs, incoherence and stupid, vicious leaders in charge in so many places – we expected this from North Korea, Russia, China, they have been tyrannies for so long, some of them almost forever, perhaps with a hiatus of just some years, but it is getting worse

And what seems incomprehensible is that some of those despots are popular, in part because they resort to ‘populism’ – which I guess is defined by promising the hoi polloi all sorts of goodies, just to get to office, in the case of Orange Woland, he said he will (only he can) fix it on day one, but now he is actually ruining it

 

Yesterday, Orange Woland has met a smaller devil, Bukele, the latter is so liked, voters in other South American, surely Central American too, countries want to see someone like him in charge, just because he has taken drug dealers and gangsters and placed them all in mega prisons, which are now favored by the USA

Yes, it is good to have those criminals in jail, we were discussing this earlier at the sauna, but along with the guilty and the violent, you have those who are just suspected, or sent in by mistake, as is the case of that man that they will not get back to his family, and not just that, but these ghouls show their glee when they do it

 

We need to be ready for more of this, it is the time when we need Stoicism https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/04/stoicism-philosophy-of-calmness-by.html to cope with adversity and trauma, the rude, ruthless ae on the rise everywhere, and just as with Orange Woland, there would be no problem if he were a lunatic rambling in his hotels, but the fact that more than seventy million Americans, most of them MAGA, identified with him, have the same ‘values’ is creepy and we have to read Seneca and learn from him

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’