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June 5 - June 9, 2025
Even today it’s not unusual for a client in therapy to arrive at the paradoxical revelation that losing their job may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them.
In plain English, what the Cynics meant was that our character is the only thing that ultimately matters and that wisdom consists in learning to view everything else in life as utterly worthless by comparison. They believed that mastering this attitude required lifelong moral and psychological training in the voluntary endurance of hardship and renunciation of certain desires.
For Stoics, virtue is still the only true good—the Cynics were right about that—but it’s also natural to prefer health to sickness, wealth to poverty, friends to enemies, and so on, within reasonable bounds. External advantages such as wealth may create more opportunities but in themselves they simply don’t have the kind of value that can ever define a good life.
The true goal of life for Stoics isn’t to acquire as many external advantages as possible but to use whatever befalls us wisely, whether it be sickness or health, wealth or poverty, friends or enemies. The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to “need” countless things, but he uses them all badly.
Wisdom itself is uniquely valuable because it allows us to judge the value of external things—it’s the source of everything else’s value. How therefore does it profit a man, the Stoics might say, if he gains the whole world but loses his wisdom and virtue?
Even the Stoic wise man, therefore, may tremble in the face of danger. What matters is what he does next. He exhibits courage and self-control precisely by accepting these feelings, rising above them, and asserting his capacity for reason.
The wise man will endure pain and discomfort, such as undergoing surgery or engaging in strenuous physical exercise, if it’s healthy for his body and, more important, if it’s healthy for his character. He’ll likewise forgo pleasures like eating junk food, indulging in drugs or alcohol, or oversleeping if they are unhealthy for his body or bad for his character. Everything comes back to the exercise of reason and the goal of living wisely.
These observations are used to illustrate Stoic metaphysical ideas: the beauty of something’s apparent flaws and its worth become clearer when viewed as part of a larger picture.
Exposed shoulders were the mark of a Cynic or Stoic philosopher’s endurance against the cold,
He believed that true strength consisted of one’s ability to show kindness, not violence or aggression.
Antoninus was completely unpretentious. We’re told that upon being acclaimed emperor, despite some resistance from the palace staff, he earned great respect from the people by minimizing the pomp of the imperial court. He often dressed as an ordinary citizen, without wearing the robes of state, to receive visitors, and he tried to continue living as he had previously done. Whereas his subjects came to humor Hadrian, wary of his changeable moods and quick temper, Antoninus was famous for his calm demeanor and for welcoming plain speaking at court and elsewhere. Unlike Hadrian, Antoninus would
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those states prospered where the philosophers were kings or the kings philosophers.
for a Stoic to exhibit the virtue of temperance, he must have at least some trace of desire to renounce, and to exhibit courage he must have at least these first sensations of fear to endure. As the Stoics like to put it, the wise man is not made of stone or iron but of flesh and blood.
What matters, in other words, isn’t what we feel but how we respond to those feelings.
As an aspiring Stoic, you should begin by practicing deliberately describing events more objectively and in less emotional terms.
In typically blunt fashion he told them that sheep don’t vomit up grass to show the shepherds how much they’ve eaten but rather digest their food inwardly and produce good wool and milk outwardly.
Imagining that we’re being observed helps us to pay more attention to our own character and behavior.
The term “mentor” comes from Homer’s Odyssey. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and virtue, disguises herself as a friend of Odysseus named Mentor so that she can counsel his son Telemachus, who is in grave danger.
We should remind ourselves, Epicurus said, that pain is always bearable because it is either acute or chronic but never both.
“a little pain is contemptible, and a great one is not lasting.” You can therefore learn to cope by telling yourself that the pain won’t last long if it’s severe or that you’re capable of enduring much worse if the pain is chronic.
Pain, discomfort, fatigue—they’re all just unpleasant sensations.
Remind yourself that Nature has given you both the capacity to exercise courage and the endurance to rise above pain and that we admire these virtues in other people, which we discussed in relation to contemplating and modeling virtue.
Replace Nature with God
Given that suffering arises from our negative value judgments, the Stoics say that the fear of pain does us far more harm than pain itself because it injures our very character. Pain, by contrast, is harmless if you learn to accept it with an attitude of indifference.
His equanimity remained intact as long as he never desired what was beyond his grasp,
familiarity breeds not contempt but indifference. We can expect anxiety to abate naturally with repeated exposure, under normal conditions.
When faced with someone whose behavior appears objectionable, Epictetus therefore advised his students simply to repeat this maxim to themselves: “It seemed right to him.”11
How can you learn to pause and gain cognitive distance from your initial feelings of anger rather than being swept along by them? By realizing that another person’s actions can’t harm your character,
it often requires more effort to deal with the consequences of losing our temper than it does just to tolerate the very acts with which we’re angry.
The Stoics believe that we take offense because we assume other people’s actions threaten our interests in some way. However, once you consider that your own anger is a bigger threat to you than the thing you’re angry about, then you inevitably start to weaken its grip.
NATURE GAVE US THE VIRTUES TO DEAL WITH ANGER
God
“To be angry is not manly but rather a mild and gentle disposition is more manly because it is more human.”
Certa Constans (“Surely Constant”) and
Pia Fidelis (“Faithful and Loyal”).
Assuredly, this body is not the one to which my mother gave birth. Indeed, I’ve been changing, dying, every day since I was born.
