After a long line of incompetence, after a long chain of excuses, after a series of failures, the Union cause finally turned around when General Ulysses S. Grant took command. Other generals had focused on pomp and circumstance, they had been anxious and defensive, they claimed they didn’t have the resources or troops they needed. As the great historian Bruce Catton wrote in The Hallowed Ground, “when Grant showed up things began to happen.” It didn’t matter if he was in charge of a small army or a big one, he was a leader and when leaders arrive, they make a difference. A staff officer noted the same thing. “We began to see things move,” he noted of Grant’s rescue of a besieged army. “We felt that everything came from a plan. He came into the army quietly, no splendor, no airs, no staff. He used to go about alone. He began the campaign the moment he reached the field. Everything was done like music, everything was in harmony.” This is a lesson that Marcus Aurelius learned from the Emperor Hadrian, who spent nearly the entirety of his reign touring the empire. He would show up in a city that had languished as a backwater and start a series of public improvements. He would come upon troops who had grown fat and lazy and put them to work building fortifications (many of which still stand). He made reforms. He replaced ineffective bureaucracy. He restored temples. He solved problems. A leader isn’t a figurehead. They are a doer. They are a solver of problems. They are in command of themselves, confident in themselves, and this feeling is contagious. They make things happen, they help the people around them make things happen. This is not random or a result of their authority, it’s because of their skill–they are playing their instrument, making music, creating harmony and progress. You can do this too, if you learn the art. Source: Daily Stoic
With the proliferation of dashcams and the spread of social media, we see these clips everywhere. It’s basically its own genre of video at this point. A driver is frustrated with someone going too slow in front of them, so they honk. Then they swerve, step on the gas to pass them–often waving a middle finger or honking a horn or shouting out a rolled down window as they do so–only to almost immediately get pulled over. Or violently crash. A vivid, painful demonstration of poetic justice a few miles down the road. It would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous. But at least it is a good reminder: First, that life on the road is dangerous. Any one of us could die in an accident at any moment–in fact, nearly 43,000 people died on U.S. roadways in each of the last two years alone. Our modern cars, modern culture built around highways, is filled with risks, yet we simply choose to not think about it. It’s also a good reminder that impulsive, emotional decisions are the cause of so much trouble. Yes, slow drivers are annoying. Yes, in many cases, they are breaking the law themselves. And they are preventing us from getting where we are going. Yet trying to get around them, trying to vent our feelings at them? It’s not worth it! Driving is dangerous enough, the Stoics would tell us if they had lived to see cars, don’t add trouble on top of it. Don’t blind yourself, distract yourself–none of us have the cognitive resources to spare. Seneca’s wonderful essay On Anger is a must read for anyone traveling on the roads these days. He reminds us what an ugly emotion anger is, and how silly it is to be screaming at people you’ll never meet again. Especially since they probably didn’t inconvenience you on purpose in the first place. And certainly none of it is worth dying over. Source: [The Daily Stoic](https://dailystoic.com/this-is-a-bad-way-to-drive-and-live/)