JAMM 11– The Aurelius Conundrum & Missing Toolboxes
A question to help you in the highs and lows, Where are all the toolboxes?
Good morning, and welcome back to another Manic Monday.
I think we’ve reached a point in JAMM where we can start cross-referencing old editions, poetic, right? A few weeks ago, I wrote about Marcus Aurelius in Fragility and Creators. But something about his story has stuck with me for quite a while, and I’ve been chewing on it longer than I expected.
The story goes: Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, had a servant who followed him around. Every time the crowd praised him, the servant would whisper, “You’re just a man. You’re just a man.” A quiet hum of humility to keep him grounded through the chaos of power and applause.
But here’s where it gets personal, because I’ve been caught in that exact battle. Most days, I genuinely feel like just a man. Another background blur in a movie with no main character. Not special. Not different. Just there. Because everything around me, people, places, the systems we move in, finds subtle ways to tell me that I’m ordinary.
At first glance, Aurelius’s story might seem like one of humility. But we forget he wasn’t like us.
He ruled an empire.
He walked streets where flowers were thrown at his feet just for existing.
We don’t live in that world.
We build businesses from scratch.
We battle 9-to-5s.
We run marathons and fall sick.
You see, when Aurelius had the flowers thrown at his feet, his whisper was protection from being carried away. But for most of us, the whispers don’t come after applause. They come in the form of rejections, failures, the system, and the haunting feeling that we’re not quite enough. We don’t need a servant to remind us; we have life for that.
So, I started calling this tug-of-war in my head The Aurelius Conundrum.
And here’s my answer:
You whisper back.
“I’m not just a man.”
Because here’s the twist: when you start whispering back “I’m not just a man” and you really believe it, something shifts. You stay consistent long enough, and the world begins to move toward your version of the truth. I’ve been writing for long enough now that some of you genuinely consider me a writer. That didn’t happen overnight. It happened because I kept whispering the opposite of what the world was telling me.
But when that shift happens, when the crowd starts clapping, when the flowers do get thrown, then you have to switch the whisper again. You remind yourself, “You’re just a man.” Because if you don’t pull yourself back down, the world will do it for you eventually. No one escapes that gravity. That’s the conundrum. Believe you’re more when you’re low. Stay humble when you’re high. A delicate dance in the mind.
It’s a thin line.
A tightrope walk.
A balancing act between delusion and humility.
So I ask you
Are you just a man?
Or are you something more, becoming something more?
Since you’re here, and if you’ve been enjoying JAMM, do me a favour and share it with two friends. We’re on Substack now and growing slowly but surely. You can join or invite someone here:
Music Recommendation:
Thinking Out Loud Tuesdays
I recently shifted to a quieter gym. No trainers, no crowds. Just me, a few rusting machines, and the uncle who shows up early in the morning. It’s not perfect, far from it, but something about the stillness there makes me sharper. More aware.
There’s this Smith machine that stopped working. For weeks, it sat there unused, a mechanical relic left to rust. No one fixed it, and no one complained. But I gave it a look and realised it only needed a minor tweak, just a turn of an Allen key.
So I went home, picked up my Bosch toolbox, came back, and fixed it. Simple. Done.
Now that toolbox, it's one of the first things I bought when I moved out. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s instinct. Or maybe a legacy. You see, my grandfather had an entire room of tools. Imported American-made Stanleys, mechanical magazines, racks of equipment, it was like a temple of self-sufficiency. As a kid, that room fascinated me. Everything in it said: you can fix it yourself, or you can build anything.
And now, I look around. Most men I know don’t own a toolbox. They’ve never used a drill. Some don’t know what an Allen key even is. And it’s not just about the tools. It’s the idea. The belief that if something breaks, you can be the one to fix it. That self-reliance isn’t outdated; it’s essential.
There’s a quote that comes to mind:
"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times."
– G. Michael Hopf
We’re deep into the “good times create weak men” part of the cycle. You can see it everywhere. Identity diluted. Creativity is replaced with templates. A generation shouting into the abyss with nothing real behind it. Businesses that look like ChatGPT prompts, well-branded, well-packaged, and completely hollow. You can’t fix what breaks, because nothing was built with hands anymore. No sweat in the screws. No fingerprints on the steel.
Where are all the toolboxes? And more importantly, where are the men?
A generation of easy, no grease in the fingernails.
Maybe we’re all part of the problem. I don’t know.
But maybe, just maybe, it starts with a small step.
Maybe it starts with buying a toolbox.
Jacob John
Over and Out.
This was a good read. Well written and thought provoking!