The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

Now, am I urging you to be hard-hearted, do I ask that you betray no emotion at the funeral, do I refuse to let your spirit even be touched? Not at all. It would be barbarous, not courageous, to watch the burial rites of one’s own – with the same eyes that watched them while living – and not be moved as one’s family is first torn apart. Suppose I did forbid it: some things have rights of their own. Tears fall even from those trying to hold them back; being shed, they lift the spirit. What, then, shall we do? Let us allow them to fall, but not order them to do so; let there be as much weeping as emotion may produce, not as much as imitation may demand. Let us add nothing to grief, nor enlarge it to match the example of someone else.