Speaker 1: Montaigne was not an ordinary philosopher. He did not ascend
Speaker 1: to pulpits, create complex systems, or try to force the
Speaker 1: world into rational formulas. He wrote from within his own skin.
Speaker 1: Sitting in his library, surrounded by books and silence, Michel
Speaker 1: de Montaigne decided to investigate the most unstable and mysterious
Speaker 1: object that exists, himself. His texts are not treatises, They
Speaker 1: are mirrors. He did not write to convince you, but
Speaker 1: to invite you to think, to doubt, to question, to
Speaker 1: look within yourself without fear, or rather despite the fear.
Speaker 1: Unlike other thinkers who sought universal truths, Montaigne embraced the opposite.
Speaker 1: He did not know, and the more he lived, the
Speaker 1: more he realized that knowing little about the world, and
Speaker 1: even less about himself, was not of flaw. It was
Speaker 1: a rare wisdom persage. He constantly asked what do I know?
Speaker 1: Not as a provocation, but as a starting point, because
Speaker 1: admitting ignorance, for him, was not an intellectual failure. It
Speaker 1: was a liberation. It was stopping the pretense, stopping the
Speaker 1: maintenance of masks. It was lifting the burden of having
Speaker 1: to be someone right complete impenetrable. The modern world rejects
Speaker 1: this humility. We live in a time when one must
Speaker 1: have an opinion about everything, a stance on everything. Certainty
Speaker 1: is as sharp as blades. But Montaigne offers us the opposite,
Speaker 1: the chance to be human before being ideological. He believed
Speaker 1: that our fragility, our doubts, our contradictions are not weaknesses
Speaker 1: to be corrected, but essential parts of what makes us
Speaker 1: truly alive. And perhaps that is exactly what you need
Speaker 1: to hear right now, that you no longer need to
Speaker 1: uphold false certainties to be worthy, that you don't need
Speaker 1: to know everything to move forward, that it's okay to
Speaker 1: be incomplete. Montaigne allowed himself to change his mind. He
Speaker 1: contradicted himself. He admitted that what he thought yesterday might
Speaker 1: not hold true today. He understood the natural movement of
Speaker 1: the human mind, which molds, adapts, and transforms, and instead
Speaker 1: of fighting against it, he embraced it with kindness, with irony,
Speaker 1: with astonishment. He knew that living is not about dominating
Speaker 1: the world with solid ideas, but about navigating it with
Speaker 1: an open mind and an attentive heart. And that is
Speaker 1: why Montaigne is so necessary today. In a time when
Speaker 1: everyone shouts, he whispers, in a time of hard certainties,
Speaker 1: he teaches the lightness of doubt. And if you are
Speaker 1: feeling lost, crushed by the demands of being someone stable defined, unchangeable,
Speaker 1: perhaps what you lack is not direction, but freedom, the
Speaker 1: freedom to change, to not know, to simply be. But
Speaker 1: Montaigne does not just invite us to doubt. He warns
Speaker 1: us about the price of fleeing from it, because the
Speaker 1: more we try to control life, the more suffering we generate.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly what we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about now, the silent suffering that arises from the desperate
Speaker 1: attempt to control the uncontrollable. If this content is making
Speaker 1: sense to you, click the subscribe button and subscribe to
Speaker 1: the channel. Thank you for your support. You try to
Speaker 1: control everything, don't you tomorrow? Other people's reactions, your career,
Speaker 1: your body, your feelings, even what doesn't depend on you.
Speaker 1: And the more you try to hold the reins of life,
Speaker 1: the more it slips away. It's like trying to grasp
Speaker 1: water with your hands. The tighter you squeeze, the more
Speaker 1: it flows away. Have you noticed how much this costs you?
Speaker 1: This obsession with control is not just exhausting, it's toxic.
Speaker 1: It turns you into a prisoner of unrealistic expectations, a
Speaker 1: permanent inspector of everything that could go wrong. And this
Speaker 1: has a name anxiety. Anxiety at its core is the
Speaker 1: fear of the unpredictable. It's the desperation for guarantees in
Speaker 1: a world that offers none. Most people live in this
Speaker 1: constant state of alert, trying to anticipate every curve in
Speaker 1: the road, as if that could prevent the accidents of
Speaker 1: the soul. But Montaigne knew something that modern psychology only
Speaker 1: confirmed centuries later. Living in an attempt to predict the
Speaker 1: future is to live in a state of war with reality.
Speaker 1: You see, human suffering doesn't come only from what happens
Speaker 1: to us. Often it comes from our futile struggle against
Speaker 1: what happens. It's the desire for life to be different
Speaker 1: from what it is. It's the denial of the natural
Speaker 1: flow of things. Montaigne wrote about this with an almost
Speaker 1: disconcerting frankness. He accepted his pains, his losses, his uncertainties,
Speaker 1: not as something to be eliminated, but as an integral
Speaker 1: part of existence, and by doing so, he freed himself
Speaker 1: from the burden of resisting everything. Have you noticed how
Speaker 1: the most controlling people are also the most tense, the
Speaker 1: most exhausted, the most inflexible. They don't relax because they
Speaker 1: believe that if they're not always in control, something bad
Speaker 1: will happen. But this belief doesn't protect it imprisons. Montaigneur,
Speaker 1: on the contrary, proposed a conscious surrender, not a cowardly resignation,
Speaker 1: but a courageous acceptance that the world is not your slave,
Speaker 1: and that your mind needs to learn to flow, not
Speaker 1: to dominate. And here lies the cruel irony. The more
Speaker 1: you try to control, the more frustrated you become, and
Speaker 1: the more frustrated you are, the more you think you
Speaker 1: need control. It's a vicious cycle that swallows you whole.
Speaker 1: And what do you gain in the end a tense body,
Speaker 1: an exhausted mind, and a soul without peace. Montaigne shows
Speaker 1: us another way. Living well is not about controlling everything.
Speaker 1: It's about knowing how to coexist with what cannot be controlled.
Speaker 1: But how do you do that in practice? How do
Speaker 1: you learn to live with the unpredictable without losing yourself
Speaker 1: in it? The answer lies in monte Own attitude toward life,
Speaker 1: the constant practice of self reflection, not as a way
Speaker 1: to analyze oneself coldly, but as a ritual of deep
Speaker 1: inner listening. While the world cried out for certainties, Montaigne
Speaker 1: withdrew into silence to observe what was within him. And
Speaker 1: what he found was not immediate clarity, but a whirlwind contradictions, fears,
Speaker 1: confused desires, inexplicable impulses, all those things that most prefer
Speaker 1: to hide or ignore. He chose to confront head on,
Speaker 1: but not as one who judges, as one who listens.
Speaker 1: Montaigne's great genius was not in creating theories about the
Speaker 1: human mind. It was in having the courage to become
Speaker 1: a living experiment of the human condition. He transformed himself
Speaker 1: into a field of study, and his writing became a mirror.
Speaker 1: In his essays, he does not write as one who teaches,
Speaker 1: but as one who shares a process. He thinks out
Speaker 1: loud and invites the reader to do the same. He
Speaker 1: did not want to shape minds. He wanted to free
Speaker 1: them by narrating his own doubts, his most intimate impulses,
Speaker 1: his changes of opinion, and even his moments of weakness.
Speaker 1: Montaigne shows us something revolutionary. You do not need to
Speaker 1: be right all the time. You just need to be
Speaker 1: present with yourself. This practice of constant self observation, without
Speaker 1: filter and without mask is one of the deepest forms
Speaker 1: of self knowledge that exists. But be careful. Observing yourself
Speaker 1: is not about torturing yourself with criticism. It is about
Speaker 1: learning to look inward with honesty and compassion. It is
Speaker 1: about realizing when you are trying to deceive yourself, when
Speaker 1: you are pretending to know what you do not know,
Speaker 1: when you are forcing yourself to maintain an image that
Speaker 1: no longer represents you. Montaigne wrote to free himself from
Speaker 1: these shackles. He said, I am human, and nothing human
Speaker 1: is alien to me. In other words, everything that resides
Speaker 1: in you, no matter how confusing or uncomfortable it may seem,
Speaker 1: is a legitimate part of who you are. And do
Speaker 1: you know what is the most powerful aspect of this practice.
Speaker 1: It dissolves shame. When you begin to observe yourself with sincerity,
Speaker 1: you realize that much of your suffering comes from the
Speaker 1: attempt to be something idealized, from following an unrealistic model
Speaker 1: of emotional, intellectual, or moral perfection. Montaigne reminds us that
Speaker 1: we are not marble statues. We are mutable, flawed beings,
Speaker 1: and beautifully imperfect. The simplicity we seek begins when we
Speaker 1: see stop fighting against our own nature, and here comes
Speaker 1: a powerful key. This acceptance is not passivity. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: it is the first step toward any real transformation, because
Speaker 1: only those who see themselves clearly can change authentically. Only
Speaker 1: those who embrace their shadow can walk toward the light.
Speaker 1: But there is another essential layer to this journey, because
Speaker 1: even if you start to observe yourself, you still need
Speaker 1: to deal with something inevitable. Change. Nothing in you, in others,
Speaker 1: or in the world remains fixed. And as long as
Speaker 1: we do not understand this truth and do not learn
Speaker 1: to live with it, we will continue to suffer. This
Speaker 1: is what we will talk about now. If what you're
Speaker 1: hearing resonates with you, you'll find real value in my
Speaker 1: ebook Beyond the Shadow. It breaks down Jung's core ideas
Speaker 1: and give gives you tools to understand yourself more deeply.
Speaker 1: Link is in the pinned comment. Most people live as
Speaker 1: if life should be a straight line, as if one day,
Speaker 1: by acquiring certain knowledge stability or success, everything would finally
Speaker 1: fall into place, as if there were a destination where
Speaker 1: everything would stop changing, where feelings would stabilize, where doubts
Speaker 1: would disappear, and things would make sense. But this fantasy,
Speaker 1: sould by religions, schools, gurus, and even corporate culture, is
Speaker 1: precisely what distances us from reality and from peace. Montaigne
Speaker 1: saw this with rare clarity. He knew that everything in
Speaker 1: life pulses in flow. Our thoughts change, our bodies age,
Speaker 1: people come and go, our desires transform, our certainties dissolve.
Speaker 1: Nothing is fixed, nothing is guaranteed, nothing is definitive. And
Speaker 1: trying to live as if it were, as if life
Speaker 1: should be predictable, unchanging controllable, is to prepare the ground
Speaker 1: for frustration, suffering, and emotional collapse. Change is not an accident.
Speaker 1: It is the essence of existence, and the more we
Speaker 1: resist it, the more rigid, bitter, and disconnected from the
Speaker 1: present we become. Montaigne accepted his changes as part of
Speaker 1: his humanity. He knew that being inconsistent at times was
Speaker 1: a sign of growth, that changing one's mind was a
Speaker 1: sign of courage, that letting go of an old thought,
Speaker 1: even for another equally uncertain one was a step toward clarity.
Speaker 1: Constancy is a virtue of mechanical minds, he provocatively stated.
Speaker 1: For him, living well was not about clinging to a
Speaker 1: fixed identity, but about dancing with impermanence. Have you noticed
Speaker 1: how most of your fears are linked to the possibility
Speaker 1: of change. Fear of losing someone, fear of losing a job,
Speaker 1: fear of things changing. But what if instead of resisting
Speaker 1: you began to embrace these transformations as part of the
Speaker 1: natural process of life, as Montaigne did. What if you
Speaker 1: stopped viewing each transition as a failure and started seeing
Speaker 1: it as evolution. Accepting change is not about conforming. It
Speaker 1: is about stopping the fight against the flow of reality.
Speaker 1: It is learning to ride the wave instead of trying
Speaker 1: to damn the sea. The lightness that so many seek
Speaker 1: does not come from forced stability, but from inner flexibility,
Speaker 1: from the ability to let go, to adapt, to be reborn.
Speaker 1: Montaigne understood this before his time, and perhaps you are
Speaker 1: beginning to understand it now. But reck ignizing change as
Speaker 1: natural does not solve everything. It is necessary to know
Speaker 1: how to deal with this instability from within, How to
Speaker 1: sustain one's existence amid doubt, chaos, and the unknown without
Speaker 1: going mad. This is where philosophy meets practice, and where
Speaker 1: Montaigne offers us a path the construction of mental habits,
Speaker 1: of internal rituals that help us live better with uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Philosophy is of no use if it doesn't touch real life.
Speaker 1: Montaigne knew this. His texts are not abstract musings. They
Speaker 1: are existential tools. He didn't right to impress intellectuals, but
Speaker 1: to understand how to deal with the fear of death,
Speaker 1: with sadness, with insecurity, with the aging body, with the
Speaker 1: faltering mind. And perhaps the greatest gift Montaigne left us
Speaker 1: was precisely this, the idea that thinking is an act
Speaker 1: of survival, that reflecting on one's own life is a
Speaker 1: way to learn to live it with more courage and
Speaker 1: less suffering. But how exactly does one live with uncertainty.
Speaker 1: It's not just a matter of accepting. It's a constant practice,
Speaker 1: a re education of the mind. And this requires discipline,
Speaker 1: not discipline in the rigid military sense, but in the
Speaker 1: sense of commitment to your own freedom, because living well
Speaker 1: with uncertainty is a daily exercise. Here are some Montignan
Speaker 1: principles that can truly change the way you deal with life. First,
Speaker 1: question your certainties. Every time you feel one hundred percent
Speaker 1: sure about something, stop, observe reflect Absolute certainty is often
Speaker 1: a disguise for fear, a defense mechanism against the discomfort
Speaker 1: of not knowing. Montaigne did exactly that. He doubted even
Speaker 1: his own thoughts, not out of insecurity, but out of wisdom.
Speaker 1: He knew that the most dangerous thought is the one
Speaker 1: that does not admit to being revised. Second, practice self
Speaker 1: questioning as a ritual. Write. It doesn't matter if it's
Speaker 1: a diary, a letter that will never be sent, or
Speaker 1: a loose note. Putting your thoughts on paper is a
Speaker 1: powerful way to make visible what troubles you. Montaigne wrote
Speaker 1: hundreds of pages about himself, not out of vanity, but
Speaker 1: to understand himself, to organize internal chaos, to make his
Speaker 1: own mind habitable. Third, embrace impermanence as an organizing principle.
Speaker 1: Plan yes, but know how to let go of the
Speaker 1: plan when life changes, because it will change. Flexibility is
Speaker 1: true strength. Instead of relying on fragile certainties, learn to
Speaker 1: move with ease, adapt, reconfigure, reinvent. Montaigne said that the
Speaker 1: wisest man is the one who knows how to change
Speaker 1: with the things that change. Fourth, cultivate humor in the
Speaker 1: face of your own fragility. Yes, laugh at yourself. Montaigne
Speaker 1: didn't take himself too seriously, and that's why he was
Speaker 1: so profound. He laughed at his own inconsistencies, mocked his fears,
Speaker 1: and ironized his vanity. Humor is a way not to
Speaker 1: be crushed by your own demands. It's a way of saying,
Speaker 1: I am human and that's okay. Finally, reserve moments of silence,
Speaker 1: to be with yourself without distraction, no phone, no stimulation,
Speaker 1: just presence. Solitude was Montaigne's greatest ally, not for isolation,
Speaker 1: but for clarity. It is in silence that you hear
Speaker 1: what you really think. It is in the pause that
Speaker 1: the mind reorganizes itself, and it is in that internal
Speaker 1: space that uncertainty ceases to be a threat and transforms
Speaker 1: into fertile ground for new possibilities. But all of this,
Speaker 1: as powerful as it is, only makes sense when you
Speaker 1: see the real value behind all this practice. Freedom, the
Speaker 1: freedom to be who you are without needing to have
Speaker 1: all the answers, the freedom to live lightly even when
Speaker 1: nothing is certain, the freedom to belong to yourself. And
Speaker 1: it is precisely with this theme, the inner freedom that
Speaker 1: arises from the acceptance of doubt, that we will conclude
Speaker 1: this journey because Montaigne didn't just want you to survive chaos.
Speaker 1: He wanted you to dance with it. In the end,
Speaker 1: everything you tried so hard to control was from the
Speaker 1: very beginning uncontrollable. Life was not made to fit into
Speaker 1: your emotional spreadsheets, nor to obey your idealized calendar. People
Speaker 1: will disappoint you, plans will fail, feelings will change, and
Speaker 1: none of this is a mistake. It is simply the
Speaker 1: nature of things. Montaigne understood this with an almost uncomfortable clarity.
Speaker 1: He saw that suffering does not come from change itself,
Speaker 1: but from the resistance to it, from the refusal to
Speaker 1: accept that life is flow, not form. When you embrace uncertainty,
Speaker 1: something changes, not in the world outside, but within you.
Speaker 1: Rigidity begins to give way, anxiety loses its meaning. You
Speaker 1: stop fighting against what is and start flowing with what
Speaker 1: presents itself. This is not resignation. It it is wisdom.
Speaker 1: It is emotional maturity. It is freedom, the freedom to
Speaker 1: live without the burden of having to understand everything, to
Speaker 1: not need a label for every feeling, an explanation for
Speaker 1: every pain, a right path for every choice. Life does
Speaker 1: not demand perfection from you, It only asks for presents.
Speaker 1: The simplicity we seek so much is not outside. It
Speaker 1: is not in a life without problems, in an impeccable routine,
Speaker 1: or in a completely planned future. It is in the
Speaker 1: moment you allow yourself not to know, in the moment
Speaker 1: you say, with honesty and courage, I don't have all
Speaker 1: the answers, and that's okay, because it is in that
Speaker 1: space of humility that true peace is born, the peace
Speaker 1: that does not depend on circumstances, the peace that comes
Speaker 1: from within. Montaigne taught us that by accepting our ignorance,
Speaker 1: we become more human and more free. And if you've
Speaker 1: made it this far, if this message resonated within you,
Speaker 1: it's because there is a part of you ready to
Speaker 1: let go of the weight of control, ready to breathe
Speaker 1: more lightly, ready to live with more authenticity. So tell
Speaker 1: me what in you still resists the unknown. What do
Speaker 1: you feel when you look to the future and see
Speaker 1: no clear answers,