Stoic Prompt Week 9 (2024)
"My reasoned choice is as Indifferent to the reasoned choice of my neighbor, as to his breath and body. However much we've been made for cooperation, the ruling reason in each of us is master of its own affairs. If this weren't the case, the evil in someone else could become my harm, and God didn't mean for someone else to control my misfortune." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.56
What would happen if I took a second to cool down?
Someone very important to me read my Stoic prompt where I talked about controlling my outbursts. The comment was made, "It's a little disheartening that at your age you haven't learned to control your outbursts."
Mea Culpa.
It is disheartening, but that is not the most disturbing aspect. Merely controlling one's outburst is a tactic only, meant to conceal the anger from others. Not diminish it. Some people are quite good at it. I’m not. Even if one is good at it, the suppressed anger is still destructive, the emotional effort required disturbs one's ‘Wu Wei.’ One's personal harmony.
A more strategic goal is not to experience the anger in the first instance: to cultivate indifference. That is much tougher to pull off (for me). I am not a raving mad man. (Well, maybe not.) In my efforts to control my anger, I deny to my wife that I am upset or angry. Clearly not the case. As is evident by my body language and my general demeanor.
I promised Jill that I would work on this in 2024. That's why my anger has been the subject of so many Stoic Prompts this year.
Pausing just for a moment, re-evaluating my initial perception, re-processing, then coming to a benign judgment is so much better on my blood pressure and on my beautiful bride's Wu Wei. Which is extremely important to me.
Work in progress.
Stoic Dont's
1. Don't be overheard complains. Not even to yourself -Marcus Aurelius
2. Don't talk more than you listen. Two ears one mouth - Zero
3. Don't tie your identity to things that you own. Those things 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 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 to not be like them - Marcus Aurelius
