Author: John Jalsevac

“Don’t just do something, stand there!” This amusing inversion of every exasperated parent’s command to a child staring dazedly at  ____ [a heap of still-unfolded laundry, a half-erected tent about to collapse, a bleeding sibling] has been variously attributed to …

G.K. Chesterton once wrote of his friend Bernard Shaw, the playwright, that he was possibly “the only man on earth who has never written any poetry.” This quip strikes us, living in an age where scarcely anyone reads poetry, let …

The Imitation of Christ is, by some accounts, the second most popular book in history, next to the Bible. This slim volume, written by Thomas à Kempis, an obscure medieval monk, is packed with timeless wisdom. My own favourite version …

Ten thousand times a day we are presented with choices for what to do. And nine times out of ten, we choose wrongly. This is hardly surprising, for, as Aristotle once sagely said, there are an infinite number of ways …

    Editor’s Note: In keeping with the theme of this week’s essay – found here – we’re publishing this sonnet that I wrote a number of years ago. Oddly, the form I followed is a combination of the Petrarchan …

Over the past four years, I have read and re-read 'Deep Work' as many as seven or eight times. I've lost count. In reality, I'm always reading it.

But time and again Odysseus turned his face toward the radiant sun, anxious for it to set, yearning now to be gone and home once more … As a man aches for his evening meal when all day long his …