Boundaries, Opinions, & Footsteps
Wednesday Wisdoms for July 16, 2025
Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.
This month we’re exploring the theme of Mortality.
Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.
Boundaries
🤨 Quote
“…a living thing can be healthy, strong, and fruitful only when bounded by a horizon.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Source: In Emergency, Break Glass
Observation 🧐
We need boundaries in order to properly understand the importance of things.
We have boundaries in the form of fields, walls, or even laws.
These boundaries give shape to the structure of the thing at hand. In football, the sideline and end zones, for property lines in the form of fences or walls, and for laws what is and is not permissible in a society.
Without proper boundaries, we don’t get a full understanding of what’s at play. If something goes on forever, we don’t have structure to our actions. Things become dull after a while.
A football player can run endlessly in any direction to avoid the other players. It is the containment that forces their specific actions. Boundaries are what establish the rules and the rules are what fuel proper action.
By having a boundary on our time—on our body—we’re forced to prioritize how we want to live and what we do with our lives.
🤔 Question
Reflect upon your life. How do the boundaries or horizons you see dictate the actions you take?
Opinions
🤨 Quote
“It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinions about things. Death, for instance, is nothing terrible (otherwise, it would have appeared that way to Socrates) but the terrible thing is the opinion that death is terrible.”
Epictetus
Source: How to be Free. Entry 5.
Observation 🧐
Death looms over us with such fear because it is the unknown none of us can answer.
We’re all like children, we fear the things we cannot see, the things we haven’t experienced. We build these things into stories, and with those stories come judgments.
But these are premeditative. We fear because when a loved one passes away, we’re the ones left to see the remnants of what once was.
But we too will one day be there. We too will have to experience the end.
And so withholding judgment, reminding ourselves that the negativity we form around death is but an opinion, we remind ourselves not to look down upon it, but rather, to embrace it is the natural progression to life.
🤔 Question
If you fear death, what is the opinion that first triggered this fear? What would it take to change your opinion of this?
Beneath the paywall this week we explore the wisdom of Anne Lamott. Click below to support and get access.