A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

by William B. Irvine

If we are overly sensitive, we will be quick to anger. More generally, says Seneca, if we coddle ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by pleasure, nothing will seem bearable to us, and the reason things will seem unbearable is not because they are hard but because we are soft. Seneca therefore recommends that we take steps to ensure that we never get too comfortable. (This, of course, is only one of the reasons Stoics give for eschewing comfort; in chapter 7 we examined some others.) If we harden ourselves in this manner, we are much less likely to be disturbed, he says, by the shouting of a servant or the slamming of a door, and therefore much less likely to be angered by such things. We won’t be overly sensitive about what others say or do, and we will be less likely to find ourselves provoked by “vulgar trivialities,” such as being served lukewarm water to drink or seeing a couch in a mess.6