“We should not, like sheep, follow the herd of creatures in front of us, making our way where others go, not where we ought to go.” In the Stoic view, the things we often find ourselves chasing in life reveal themselves to be rather petty and meaningless from a sufficient distance. We don’t have much, if any, control over what happens to us, how people see and treat us, or what happens because of what we do, and in the big picture, none of it really matters all that much anyway. And so, we must define our happiness not by what we own or achieve, not by how others see us, not by some bigger
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