The Strenuous Life
Sweet Bites for March 7, 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 adversity.
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
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🍰 Mini Bite
One of Theodore Roosevelt’s earliest memories was of his father holding him tight as he suffered from an asthma attack.
"I was a sickly, delicate boy," Roosevelt would reflect.
Yet this isn’t the Roosevelt we remember.
It was Roosevelt’s father who told the boy he had a weak body and would need to strengthen it in order to succeed in life.
“You have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body.”
This single statement would change Roosevelt’s entire outlook on life.
He pushed himself in everything he did and explored everything he could. He worked out and loved being in nature. He was a boxer when he was at Harvard. He went expediting down the Amazon river.
“It is hard to fail,” he would say, “but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
“He truly was a Renaissance Man who excelled at everything he did or exhausted himself trying,” one biographer would state.
This “bull moose” refused to give in. Thing after thing Roosevelt approached with the ferocity of a man trying to grab every ounce of life. He seemed to take his father’s words as those of god and devoted himself to always seeking out challenges. It didn’t matter if he was weak or tired or injured, Roosevelt pushed himself, his eye always on getting to the other side knowing there were lessons to be learned.
“He ran through life and ran fast, leaving behind any emotional obstacle that might stand in the way,” writes a biographer.
“Even if you have struggled to make the most of what nature gave you, you must still admit that your ability and inclination to struggle is part of your inheritance,” Sam Harris once observed.
And yet, we choose to side-step challenges as they arise. Why? Because we’re afraid? Because we don’t think we’re strong enough yet? That we’re not ready?
Why don’t we all achieve greatness Epictetus asked his students.
“Does every hound become a good hunter? Well then, am I to stop trying just because I lack natural ability? Perish the thought.”
Being unprepared, feeling weak, feeling like we’re not naturally gifted, these are just excuses. There is no time like the present to grab life by the horns and learn.
The key is not in the body but the mind. If we can focus our mind to commit to the challenge of life, to treat it as a giant learning experience, we suddenly no longer have excuses when we encounter challenges.
Roosevelt saw the strenuous life as the path to greatness. When we refuse to let our will crumble, when we force ourselves to get through a challenge, these are the moments that not only teach us how to grow, but make our lives truly worth living.
“The highest form of success comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”
We each have a choice and it arrives every day. When adversity strikes, will I go around or will I go through?
“Everything you're trying to reach - by taking the long way round,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, “you could have right now, this moment. If you'd only stop thwarting your own attempts.”
Stop making excuses. Seize the moment.
🧘🏻This Week’s Monday Meditation
🦉 This Week’s Wednesday Wisdom
📚 Wisdom
“Because consciousness must involve both pleasure and pain, to strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of consciousness. Because such a loss is in principle the same as death, this means that the more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.“
Alan Watts
Source: The Wisdom of Insecurity
🏋🏻 Man in the Arena
🎙 Podcast to Listen To
I really enjoyed this episode with Alain de Botton, the philosopher behind The School of Life.
In it, he discusses relationships—those with others as well as with ourselves. He also dives into negative patterns we all live with from childhood and how we can begin repairing them.
Think someone you know would enjoy these? Hit below to forward and spread the love.
Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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