Stoic Prompt Week 7 (2024)
"Keep constant guard over your perceptions, for it is no small thing you are protecting, but your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word your freedom. For what would you sell these things?" Epictetus Discourses, 4.3.6B - 8
How can I do a better job listening to the little voice inside me?
" ... our anxiety is nothing new. When have we ever believed that the world wasn't ending?" Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel
Beginning early last year, I began to question the close attention that I pay, multiple times daily, on various media to every turn and twist of the news on a whole host of topics: world events, national events, environmental events and, yes, extraterrestrial events. I began to have anxiety when I was l removed from constant access to a digital device to monitor the world. My phone and my laptop became baby monitors, always on, always ready to witness and record junior falling out of the crib. And when junior did not fall, smack, headfirst onto the hard cold floor, I listened to various talking heads who warned me to watch very carefully, because he might launch himself over those flimsy ineffective crib walls at any time.
In the back of my mind a tiny voice was saying: "Hutchings, stop being apocalyptic." My response for the longest time has been, "I'm not. Shit's real bad."
Maybe it is, too. I finally listened. I am trying to regain my freedom by discerning what is in my control. Trying to make better use of my time. That starts with evaluating the incoming, my perceptions, then making a judgment.
When one steps back and tries to view the world from on high, it is easy to see that things have been much worse for countless generations that have come before us. Listening to that little voice has paid off. I know, because I get a report from my Android phone telling me that I have reduced my screen time significantly. Now, I go hours without checking the news.
I wonder what other tiny voices I have been suppressing.
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 identity to things you own. Those things 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 to not be like them - Marcus Aurelius
