But before that day in AD 79, Pompeii was full of life.

People opened their shops in the morning, met friends, argued with neighbours, fell in love, and worried about money. They made plans for the following week, perhaps even the following year. None of them knew that their ordinary lives would one day become a subject of historical curiosity.

Nearly two thousand years separate us from the people of Pompeii. Their world was very different from ours, yet some of their everyday feelings seem remarkably familiar.

We know this partly because of what they left on their walls.

Across the city, people scratched messages into plaster, wrote poems, declared their love, traded insults, and complained about whatever was bothering them. Some left nothing more than a name. Others wanted to be admired, remembered, or perhaps simply noticed.

Love, Admiration, and Heartbreak

In a corridor near Pompeii's theatres, an inscription tells us of a woman named Methe and the man she loved.

It identifies Methe as an enslaved woman belonging to Cominia and says that she loved a man named Chrestus. She also appealed to Venus, the goddess of love, wishing that the two of them might always live in harmony.

It was a simple wish. We do not know how they met or what happened between them. We do not even know whether Chrestus returned her feelings.

Elsewhere in Pompeii, love appears in a more heated form.

On the wall of a tavern, two men named Successus and Severus exchanged messages about a woman named Iris. Successus, a weaver, was in love with Iris, an enslaved woman connected with the tavern. According to Severus, she did not love him back.

Successus apparently had no intention of accepting his rival's claim. He accused Severus of jealousy and insisted that he himself was the more attractive man. Severus answered that he had already said what needed to be said: Iris did not return Successus's love.

There is something amusing about two men continuing an argument over a woman by writing on a wall. It is not hard to imagine them returning to check whether the other had replied.

Iris, meanwhile, left no recorded response of her own.

Love was not the only feeling people displayed in public. Admiration had its place too.

A gladiator named Celadus was praised in an inscription as suspirium puellarum—roughly, “the girls' heartthrob.” His name appeared alongside details of his gladiatorial career.

We cannot tell whether the words came from admirers or were written to build his reputation. Either way, someone thought his appeal was worth recording.

Continue reading on Cogletta →

It is a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning in October. Looking out of my window, I can see that autumn has arrived. The trees that greeted me with their bright green leaves just a few weeks ago have begun to turn yellow, orange, and brown. Some have already lost much of their foliage. Others are still holding on to the last traces of summer.

It is a familiar sight, one that returns every year. Yet something about it makes me stop and look a little longer.

Strangely, the view brings me both peace and sadness. There is something calming about the quiet transformation of the trees, but also something melancholy about watching the leaves fall. Perhaps it is the reminder that even the most familiar things cannot remain unchanged.

Only a few weeks ago, the same trees looked full of life. Nothing extraordinary had happened to them. Autumn had simply arrived, as it always does.

We accept these changes in nature without much resistance. We know that autumn will follow summer, that winter will eventually come, and that spring will bring new life. The trees do not seem troubled by the seasons. They change with them.

Our own lives are different.

We experience beginnings and endings, moments of happiness and periods of sadness. We build relationships, settle into familiar places, develop routines, and gradually become accustomed to the lives we have created. Then something changes, sometimes by choice and sometimes without warning.

Unlike the trees outside my window, we rarely know when our next season will arrive.

And I wonder: Are the seasons of human life as clearly defined as those of nature?

When Our Own Autumn Arrives

Autumn does not always arrive with falling leaves. In our lives, it can come through sorrow, disappointment, unexpected difficulties, or changes that unsettle the life we know.

Sometimes it is the loss of someone we love, an unwanted separation, or a failure we did not expect. Other times, it is leaving a city we have called home for years or having to walk away from a career we once imagined would last a lifetime.

What these experiences share is the way they change something familiar about our lives, often leaving us uncertain about what comes next.

Leaving a city, for example, means more than changing an address. We leave behind familiar streets, friendships, routines, and memories. Similarly, losing a job can affect more than our financial security. It may change our sense of purpose, our identity, and the future we had imagined for ourselves.

We often define ourselves through the lives we have built, the roles we occupy, and the things we have achieved. When these change or disappear, we may find ourselves questioning not only what we have lost, but also who we are without them.

The Winters We Live Through

I experienced something like this when I had to leave my military career.

Being a soldier had given me more than a profession. It had provided a certain identity, a status, goals, and a philosophy of life. There was a structure to my days and a direction I had grown accustomed to following.

When that chapter ended, much of what had defined my life seemed to disappear with it.

There was an opportunity to build a different life, certainly. But an opportunity is not the same as a clear path forward. The future remained uncertain, and creating a new beginning required effort without any guarantee of where that effort would lead.

Looking back, I think of that period as a kind of winter.

Winter has its own silence. Trees stand bare, the days grow shorter, and much of the activity we associate with the warmer months disappears from view. Yet beneath the apparent stillness, life continues.

There are periods in human life that feel much the same.

Losing a job, going through a separation, or leaving behind a familiar environment can bring a sense of cold uncertainty. We may not know where we belong anymore, what direction to take, or whether the plans we are making will succeed.

The most difficult part is sometimes not the loss itself, but the uncertainty that follows it.

We are accustomed to imagining our lives moving forward. We make plans, set goals, and expect tomorrow to bear some resemblance to today. When that expectation is broken, even ordinary decisions can become difficult.

Of course, people respond to loss differently. Some are able to continue their daily lives while carrying considerable sadness. Others need time before they can begin to imagine a different future. There is no fixed length for such a winter, and no single way to experience it.

Nor should every painful experience be treated as a necessary step toward personal growth. Some losses remain painful. Some changes leave wounds that time does not entirely heal.

Still, life may continue even before the sadness has disappeared.

Sometimes we take small steps without knowing where they will lead. We look for new possibilities, learn unfamiliar skills, adjust our expectations, or simply try to establish a new routine.

We may not recognize these efforts as the beginning of anything significant.

But perhaps the first signs of spring are already there.

Continue reading on Cogletta →

A child takes a stick, places it between his legs, and runs through the streets pretending to ride a horse. In the child's imagination, that simple piece of wood has transformed into a real horse. It carries him, gives him speed, and takes him somewhere.

Yet from the perspective of an observer, reality is quite different.

The child is not riding a horse. He is carrying the very thing he believes is carrying him.

Rumi applies this simple childhood game to the workings of the human mind. Human beings often see their thoughts, concepts, and accumulated knowledge as tools that elevate them. The books they have read, the ideas they have learned, and the opinions they defend give them a sense of intellectual height.

However, they often fail to notice something important: they themselves are the ones carrying the weight of this intellectual accumulation.

This leads to a fundamental question: does knowledge always liberate us, or can it sometimes become another burden that we carry on our shoulders?

Rumi offers a remarkably concise yet profound answer to this question in the first volume of the Masnavi:

When knowledge reaches the heart, it becomes a friend; when it reaches only the body, it becomes a burden.

— Rumi, Masnavi, Book I

The wordplay in the original Persian is significant. Yar means friend or companion, while bar means burden or weight. The difference between them is only one letter. Yet for Rumi, this small linguistic distinction represents two completely different outcomes of knowledge in human life.

When knowledge enters a person's inner being, transforming their character and actions, it becomes a companion. But when knowledge remains only an intellectual possession, serving pride, status, or a sense of superiority, it becomes a heavy burden.

Three Philosophical Approaches to the Transformative Power of Knowledge

The idea that knowledge should liberate human beings is one of the oldest questions in the history of philosophy. Yet Socrates, Spinoza, and Rumi approach this transformation from different directions.

Human beings are not transformed simply by possessing knowledge. What truly matters is what knowledge does to the person who possesses it.

Socrates: Knowing That You Do Not Know

Socrates' central concern was not ignorance itself, but the illusion of knowledge.

In his conversations with people who considered themselves knowledgeable, Socrates questioned the very things they claimed to understand. A person might speak confidently about courage, justice, or virtue; yet through careful questioning, Socrates would reveal that their understanding was often incomplete or based on assumptions they had never examined.

The purpose of this method, known as elenchus, was not humiliation. Socratic questioning aimed to free the mind from false beliefs and unexamined assumptions.

This is where Socrates' famous wisdom appears: he was considered wise because he recognized the limits of his own knowledge.

Continue reading on Cogletta →

It sounds like a very modern problem, but the question behind it is surprisingly old.

More than 2,400 years ago, Plato explored something similar in his Allegory of the Cave, found in The Republic. His story is usually discussed in relation to knowledge, education, and the difference between appearance and reality. But it is difficult to read it today without thinking about social media, algorithms, news feeds, and the enormous amount of information that reaches us through screens.

The technology has changed. The problem may not have changed as much as we think.

Plato's Cave

Plato asks us to imagine a group of people who have spent their entire lives chained inside a cave. They are facing a wall and cannot turn around.

Behind them is a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners, other people carry objects back and forth. The prisoners cannot see the objects themselves. They see only the shadows cast on the wall in front of them.

Because these shadows are all they have ever known, they naturally assume that the shadows are reality.

One prisoner is eventually freed. He turns around, sees the fire and the objects behind him, and slowly begins to understand that what he previously believed to be real was only an image of something else.

Then he leaves the cave.

Outside, the sunlight is initially painful. He cannot immediately see clearly. Gradually, however, his eyes adjust, and he begins to see a much larger world.

What interests me most about the story is that the prisoner was not stupid while he was inside the cave. He simply had no reason to imagine a reality beyond the one available to him.

That is also what makes the allegory uncomfortable.

Our Own Shadows

Most of what we know about the world does not come from direct experience.

I have never personally witnessed most of the political events, wars, scientific discoveries, economic crises, or social movements I have opinions about. I know about them because someone reported them, filmed them, wrote about them, commented on them, or shared them.

Continue reading on Cogletta →

And then one day, that very thing becomes a quiet yet deeply satisfying part of your daily routine.

Lately, I've been waking up with a genuine sense of curiosity every morning.

Before I even grab my coffee, the first thing I do is check my inbox or dashboard, just to see the titles of the articles waiting for me.

Because every morning, a fresh batch of articles on the topics I'm passionate about is curated while I sleep.

And the best part? I'm experiencing all of this through an app I built myself.

I've always loved reading. But somewhere along the way, between endless feeds and the noise of the day, I stopped doing it as much as I wanted to. The desire never left—only the habit did. What I really missed wasn't just reading itself, but the quiet curiosity that comes with it: the pull to understand something a little more deeply than yesterday.

Ever since I finished the minimum viable product (MVP), the rhythm of my reading habit has changed. Sometimes I'm standing on a crowded subway train during my morning commute, reading a surprise article that just hit my email. Other times, I'm settled at my desk, diving deep straight from my dashboard.

The internet, and social media especially, is a vast ocean—but encountering high-quality content that speaks directly to your specific curiosities isn't always easy. Now, starting the day with that simple question—"I wonder what I'll discover today?"—adds a whole new layer of joy to my mornings.

Spotting a problem is one thing, but building a solution with your own hands and watching it enrich your everyday life is something else entirely.

I'm happy—not just because I'm learning, but because I became the architect of the very system that feeds my curiosity.

If you have a side project in mind—something you don't expect to change the world with, but simply want to build to bring a little joy into your own life—don't wait.

Take that first step.

Experiencing the fruits of your own creation is a feeling like no other.

Behavioral science keeps pointing at the same quiet truth: the habits that actually last are almost always small. Ten minutes of walking. Making the bed each morning. A few lines written before the day begins. They look like nothing. But repeated, day after day, they stop being tasks and start becoming part of who you are. What changes people isn't the grand beginning. It's the small repetition.

Why three?

Three is a strange and useful number. Do something once and it might be luck. Set yourself ten and it starts to feel like a wall. But three feels finishable. Three small things beside your morning coffee. Three new words. Three thank-yous. Three pages. Three articles. Small enough to actually do. Big enough to change the direction of a day.

Why articles, though?

Because reading is still one of the most powerful ways we have of becoming a little more than we were yesterday. Read every day and you meet new ideas, widen your vocabulary, sharpen your focus, and borrow perspectives you'd never have arrived at alone. But none of it happens overnight. It's like training. One session won't change you. A hundred will.

The real problem today

Here's the thing: the problem was never that people stopped reading. It's that we can't decide what to read. Thousands of pieces are published every day, and every single one insists it's essential. Overwhelmed by all of them, we finish none of them. This isn't a shortage of information. It's a flood of choice.

Which is where Cogletta comes in

That's exactly where the idea of a Daily 3 came from. Not to give you more to read — the internet already does that, relentlessly. To give you less, and better. Every morning, three articles, chosen around what you actually care about. That's all. Because the goal was to build a habit you'll want to return to tomorrow morning — a small ritual instead of an endless feed.

In the end

Maybe the thing that changes your life isn't reading everything. Maybe it's really reading three.

Three articles. Every morning.

We didn't stop reading. But our relationship with reading has changed.

Consuming isn't the same as reading

We look at screens. We read words. Our thumb keeps scrolling. But the two experiences are completely different: one keeps placing something new in front of us, the other asks us to stay with a single idea for a little longer. One simply fills time. The other leaves us with something.

I think that's what many of us have been missing.

I first noticed it in myself

Some time ago, I realized something. I could spend hours on my phone, put it down, and barely remember anything I had just read. I was constantly seeing new things — but I wasn't really reading. What surprised me even more was that, for a long time, I thought the problem was me.

I need to be more disciplined. I should spend less time on my phone. I should read more books.

Maybe the problem wasn't us

Most of the products we use today are designed to keep our attention for as long as possible. That doesn't make them malicious — it's simply what they were built to do. A feed is never supposed to end, because the moment it does, you leave. So there's always one more post. Then another. Then another.

After a while, reading starts to feel less like thinking and more like consuming.

What magazines got right

I only understood this later. I used to buy magazines, or spend Sunday mornings reading the newspaper supplements. Whenever I came across an article about something I cared about, I'd read it with genuine curiosity, trying to understand it rather than simply get through it. More often than not, I'd finish thinking, “I'm glad I read that.”

Today, there are millions of thoughtful articles on the internet — probably more than ever before. But finding them has become more exhausting than reading them.

I wanted my reading habit back

What I missed was the habit of regularly reading thoughtful, up-to-date articles about the subjects I genuinely care about. Not feeling like I had to keep up with everything — just starting the day with a few carefully chosen articles.

Cogletta wasn't built to create more content; the internet already has more than enough of that. Its purpose is simply to bring together a small collection of thoughtfully selected articles every morning. Not out of nostalgia for paper, and not because we should abandon our screens — but because technology can help us build better reading habits instead of constantly competing for our attention.

Final thoughts

Maybe rebuilding a reading habit isn't about having more discipline. Maybe it's about having a simple starting point that helps us find a few things worth reading among the thousands competing for our attention every day. Life is already complicated enough. Learning doesn't have to be.

I built Cogletta because I wanted to rebuild the reading habit I had gradually lost — not by going backwards, but by making better use of the tools we already have.

Maybe what we're missing isn't more content. Maybe it's simply a few good articles that make us want to read again.