Discouragement, or at least its temptation, regularly accompanies intentional living. Even if we do not formulate it explicitly we find ourselves feeling “why do the good things I want have to be so difficult?”It is a consolation to know this is not unique to our time. “Fine things are really hard to achieve,” says Plato’s Socrates in the Republic. In fact, he is reflecting on something much akin to our situation, namely, how someone with a ‘philosophic nature’ tends to fair in the world. The image he uses resonates: