The first principle of practical Stoicism is this: we don’t react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us. We will see the Stoics develop that idea in the pages to come, but this expression of it is typical: If any external thing causes you distress, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to eliminate now. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47 The Stoic claim, in other words, is that our pleasures, griefs, desires and fears all involve three stages rather than two: not just an event and a
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