Stoic Prompt week 4 (2024)
"I will keep constant watch over myself - most usefully - will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil - that none of us looks back up on our own lives. We reflect upon only that we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past." Seneca, Moral Letters, 83.2
What ruler do I measure myself against?
If forgiveness were a ruler, I would measure myself against that measuring stick, asking for forgiveness for my past sins. I would ask forgiveness from my daughter Dawn for abandoning her. It was selfish and showed cowardice. I would ask my sister Michele for forgiveness for abandoning her to our mother. It too was selfish and showed cowardice.
But most importantly, I seek my own forgiveness, because that is in my power. That is in my control, my wheelhouse. Not a perfunctory bye-and-bye, but a thorough examination of the cause and the effect. Recapitulating those misguided resolutions to myself, to understand those poor life choices, among the many other examples from which I can select.
I suspect I will make more bad choices, too. I also suspect that I make better choices as I get older and examine my perceptions and judgments and ascertain that which I can control, separating that from that which I cannot control. Above all, trying to make choices about my behavior that I approve of; and that will not require forgiveness.
Stoic Don’ts
1. Don't be overheard complaining. Not even to yourself. -Marcus Aurelius
2. Don't talk more than you listen. -Zeno
3. Don't tie your own identity to things you own. Those are fragile and can be taken from you at any moment. -Epictetus
4. Don't compare yourself to others. Comparison is the thief of joy. -Seneca
5. Don't suffer imagined troubles. -Seneca
6. Don't suffer before you need to - those things will happen, or they won't. -Seneca
7- Don't overindulge in food or drink. This is the idea of temperance. -Musonius
8. Don't fear change. Everything that is good that has happened to you is change. -Marcus Aurelius
9. Don't look outside yourself for approval. -Marcus Aurelius
10. Don't seek revenge. The best revenge is not to be like them. -Marcus Aurelius
