I’ve always been a man in the middle.
Middle child. Middle of the class. Athletic, but not an athlete. Not tall or short. Funny to my friends, grumpy-looking to strangers.
The odd space between cool and invisible shaped me. And it’s probably why Stoicism clicked so deeply when we first met.
Stoicism, the Middle Path
Stoicism is a inner passage: not as radical as the Cynics, not as pleasure-seeking as the Epicureans. It calls for self-discipline, reason, and acceptance of what we can’t control. It doesn’t demand brilliance—just virtue. That felt like permission to be average, but intentional.
The other day I read an Atlantic piece on Cicero by Arthur C. Brooks. Cicero wasn’t a Stoic, but their ideas echoed throw his thoughts: interior strength, civic duty, calm in the storm. Even if you are living in a collapsing republic, as Cicero did.
Politics and the Polar Drift
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how my political views have changed. It’s interesting to consider this idea that talks about change of perspective, no matter how precise it is. It makes me look attached to the middle.
“If you’re not a socialist at 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”
Falsely attributed to Churchill
I’ve never bought into the Right’s cold realism, nor the Left’s dreamlike optimism. But yet the world around me kept shifting. And when one side races toward the lava pit, the stability is gone.
A Political (and Stoic) View Today
A good man in the middle is not one who stands still. He is one who swims against the current when the current pulls toward extremism. Especially when one side is rushing toward the cliff.
Maybe that’s the true Stoic path today:
Not apathy. Not detachment. But resistance to extremism, from the mild, unglamorous space between.
