I ask you, is it possible to avoid men? How can we? Can we change their nature by our society? Who gives us that power? What is left for us then, or what means do we discover to deal with them? We must so act as to leave them to do as seems good to them, while we remain in accord with Nature.
But you are impatient and discontented; if you are alone you call it a wilderness, and if you are with men you describe them as plotters and robbers, and you find fault even with your own parents and children and brothers and neighbors.
Why, when you are alone you ought to call it peace and freedom and consider yourself the equal of the gods; when you are in a large company you should not call it a crowd or a mob or a nuisance, but a high-day and a festival, and so accept all things in a spirit of content.
I often wonder if all the nasty problems that come with politics are really a deeply Stoic lesson in disguise.
I may know it is right for me to do something, and I may believe it is also right for others to do the same, and that is a fine start for good living. We get tied up in knots, however, when we fail to mind our own business.
If I should act in certain way, let me attend to that. If I wish to share it with another, let me speak to him, reason with him, encourage him. Yet where did this idea suddenly come from that I must force him to do my will, and that I must destroy him if he resists? No single person was ever, I am fairly sure, improved by insulting, bullying, or shunning.
To hate and dismiss are quite easy, to love and respect are quite difficult. The one is a surrender to the passions, the other a commitment to the understanding. By all means, work for the common good, though be certain that you are not twisting it into a game of power and self-gratification.
If something doesn’t feel right, or if my preferences have not been met, I am tempted to blame everyone and everything else. So I may swing back and forth between wanting to run away from the world on one day, and itching to beat it into submission on the next. Even if it were possible to achieve total isolation or complete mastery, neither would bring me any happiness, since they have nothing to do with the improvement of my own virtues.
No, it won’t go away or change just because I want it to. The solitude makes me crave company, and the company makes me crave solitude, and the whole while the answer was never in manipulating any of these circumstances. Let me make all of it acceptable to me by modifying my attitude, and then there will no need for complaints.
“But he has offended me! He has taken what is rightly mine!”
No, he has only offended you if you decide to make it so. No, unless he has snatched up your virtue, he has taken nothing that needed to be yours. Let the angry people bicker across the aisle, and find your contentment, whether you are in public or in private.
Written in 12/2000
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