“Short indeed is the time of your dwelling here, and easy for them whose spirit is thus disposed. What manner of tyrant or what thief or what law-courts have any fears for those who have thus set at nothing the body and its possessions? Stay where you are, and depart not without reason.”
Don’t be eager for the world to go away; be eager to change your attitude about the world, so that you will no longer feel the need for it to go away.
Then it will not be necessary to think that our circumstances are burdensome, or that other people are a hindrance to happiness; the happiness will be in appreciating why these things are simply necessary.
Though the Stoic and the Existentialist may share a stress on self-discovery and self-reliance, they must part ways when it comes to the bigger picture. For Stoicism, human nature is not inherently thrown and forlorn, but already exists within a service to all of Nature. Freedom does not exclude the Divine, but itself expresses the order of the Divine. When we build our own meaning and purpose, we are working with something far greater and richer than merely ourselves.
There is no contradiction between being myself and being a part of the whole, and there need not be any conflict between the self and the other. Bowing to God can itself be my form of making my stand.
If it has happened, it has happened for a reason, as no effect proceeds without a cause. Once I understand this, I am now free to offer my complete loyalty to Providence, and to joyfully receive the lot that is meant for me. All of it is given so that we can choose to make ourselves better, and thereby happier. Anything and everything, however horrifying or absurd, can be transformed within this context.
This will be quite impossible, of course, if I insist solely upon myself. Egoism becomes the only real enemy, with relativism as its enabling sidekick.
The language of piety, of reverence, and of gratitude begins to make far more sense when I reconsider it in such a light. It ceases to be a chore, and instead becomes a privilege. With my spirit disposed differently, the whole world is reconceived.
The many hurts and hardships, which seemed unbearable, are put in their place. The obstacles are certainly real, yet with a new measure of the good life they can appear as opportunities. If I care first for following my nature, by improving my own character, I do not need to be a slave to money, pleasure, or fame.
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