If any one of you, dismissing things without, has brought his mind to bear on his own will, to work out its full development, that he may bring it into perfect harmony with Nature—lofty, free, unhindered, untrammeled, trustworthy, self-respecting.
If he has learned that he who wills to get or to avoid what is not in his power cannot be trustworthy nor free, but must needs himself change as they change, fitful as the winds, and must needs have made himself subservient to others, who can procure or hinder such things; and if, in a word, when he rises in the morning he guards and keeps these principles, washes as one that is trustworthy, eats as one that is self-respecting, and on each occasion that arises labors to achieve his main tasks, even as the runner makes running his one aim and the voice-trainer his training—he is the man who is indeed in the path of progress and who has not travelled to no purpose.
On the rare occasions when people have actually asked me about Stoicism, and they sincerely want a sense of what it is all about, I may feebly attempt to play my best Socrates, and ask whether they think it is more important to rule themselves or to rule others.
Unless I am dealing with a total control freak, the answer will, after perhaps a moment of reflection, be the former.
Then I further ask how much time and effort they have expended on each, and whether the proportion happens to fit with their previous answer.
Some get angry and storm off, but some will pause, smile, and nod their heads. “Yes, I see where you’re going with that. I hadn’t thought of how I might get it backwards.”
My clever intention, of course, is to suggest that it isn’t even possible for them to rule their circumstances; as soon as they try, they are now themselves ruled by a worry over what isn’t theirs.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that my own failures have come from an attention to the wrong sort of mastery. As much as I might believe I have the world on a string, I suddenly find myself all tangled up. Rinse and repeat: I am not God.
I should gladly accept that others will be as they choose, that the world will play out as it does, and that what I can do is to attend to my own thinking and living. Even when I am able to somehow influence who others might become, this can only happen when I first have a handle on who I am.
I have one job, within the whole, and that is to put myself in order. Then I am finally of service to the whole.
Will what is mine to will, avoid what is mine to avoid. How many problems would be solved if I minded my own business?
Work with conscience, integrity, and justice, regardless of whether anyone else does the same. How much anger and fear could be overcome if I stuck to my own convictions?
Wake up with that sense of caring purpose, spend the day happy to commit unrecognized acts of total love, and go to bed content with a job well done. How much loss and suffering can then be avoided?
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